Ladies and Gentlemen, now introducing..... Solid Food!

So the pediatrician said it's best to wait until 6 months to introduce solid foods especially since I'm breastfeeding. It's best for her diet to contain as much breast milk as possible because all the solid food is doing is substituting carbs for what would be breast milk. So I really tried to stick it out, but starting around 4 1/2 to 5 months, she started getting really hungry all the time. She wanted to eat every 2-3 hours during the day and I was lucky if I could stretch it to 4 hours at night.


I remember when people would ask when Elliana was a week or two old, if I was sleep deprived. That first month was nothing compared to having four months without a continuous night of sleep. I was exhausted and was starting to have difficulties with my short-term memory (in the form of ditsiness).


I started to feel like my breast milk supply just wasn't fulfilling her needs, so finally I decided that 5 1/2 months was close enough so we started her on some rice cereal. At first she thought the bib was pretty cool and she was trying to figure out ways she could chew on it. Then the spoon was fascinating - a moving target her hands kept trying to grab. Then the rice cereal hit her tongue and she really didn't have too much of an opinion. I don't know what I was expecting, David and I were treating this like it was a big event, but she acted like it was nothing special. The next week we tried sweet potatoes which I pureed myself (making baby food is the easiest thing to do, especially with my new discovery of babycubes - check it out at http://www.babycubes.com/). And she didn't really have too much of an opinion about the sweet potatoes either. It seems to be so far, she might be a easy eater :)

But the best part of it was she is now sleeping 5-6 hours at a time!!!! Which it may not seem like it but it's such a difference from 3-4 hours at a time. And her temperament is more even. Before she'd be really happy and then crash and be really upset - up and down, up and down. But with the solid food keeping her belly fuller longer, she's usually a pretty happy baby.

I still haven't figured out what it is she's doing in the video below. I thought maybe I had made the cereal too thick so the "grunting" was her trying to get it down or something. It's not her pooping grunt, because that's always accompanied by her holding her breath and her face turning red. She hasn't made this noise this past week, so I don't know what to think. It's still pretty funny though.

As for my "short-term memory problems", I'm still having issues. I feel like I'll ask David a question and then two minutes later I have to ask it again because I don't remember his answer. I forgot about a dentist appointment last week. I guess I'm just learning to rely on my calendar a lot more! Hopefully this might mean that Elliana will be really smart because she's seems to have sucked half my brain cells out. :)