Not sweet on sweet potatoes

Baby G is now five months, one week old. Recently he's been very interested in what we eat, often grabbing for my fork when I eat while holding him on my lap, which I do fairly often. He's also started opening and closing his mouth with a smacking noise, which seems like he's imitating us eating.

Those activities, coupled with his insatiable desire to nurse throughout the night, convinced me he was ready to start on solid food. Originally I'd planned to stick with straight breast milk until he was six months old, but he was exhibiting all of the signs that he was ready. And I'm ready for him to sleep through the night.

My good friend gave me a great book about how to make homemade baby food - Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron. I'd read the chapter on baby's first meal and decided on sweet potatoes, one of the four choices for babies younger than six months. My other options included commercial rice cereal, (I wanted his first meal to be homemade); avocado (not my favorite); and banana, which some say is too sweet for the first food and could cause baby to refuse other less sweet foods. So, sweet potato it was. 

The book recommends serving the first meal in the morning, when babies are typically in better moods and more receptive to new things.

This morning I decided would be the morning. Baby G was in a great mood, I had extra time before I had to leave for work and I even had a sweet potato in the pantry. I rushed around microwaving the potato, getting out the video camera and packing up all of my stuff so I wouldn't worry about getting ready while serving the all-important first meal. Unfortunately, by the time I was ready, he wasn't. He'd fallen asleep because he was so exhausted staying up all night nursing.

So, fast forward nine hours. I'm home from work, excited, rewarming the cook sweet potato, mixing it with breast milk to just the right runny consistency. And I'm not the only one excited. Daddy had set up the high chair and Baby G was thought sitting in it was very fun.


Well, it turns out he wasn't nearly as excited about eating the sweet potato as he was about sitting in the chair.


He gamely tried a few more bites, then vomited the entire mess into Daddy's hand. So, I guess he isn't quite ready for solid food yet.

He did, however, enjoy sitting in the high chair and playing with his toys.

We'll try again in a few days ... or maybe a week.