Ask:
My six month old, love, love, loves her cereal. But I can very rarely get her to eat baby food, I (we) haven't even made it through all of the fruits and veggies yet. She had her 6 month check up today and the doctor asked me if we were on Stage 2 food yet. Considering that I am still trying to get through the stage 1's, I was a little worried. she said it was fine, that the baby would eat what she wanted and when she wanted to ...but should I be more "aggressive" with getting her to eat more than just cereal?? I do get the Rice cereal with babanas and apples, so that she gets fruit that way...and she will eat baby food if I mix the cereal with it...but she won't eat the baby food by itself. should I just keep trying different "flavors" or stick with one until she gets it?? I honestly don't remember having this problem with my older two. TIA for any input.
Answer:
I would continue to mix the cereal with the other foods. Maybe mix 1/2 cereal, 1/2 carrots one day, the next few days do 2/3 carrots, 1/3 cereal, and so on till she gets more used to the consistency and strong flavors of the other foods. Cereal and veggies doesn't sound very good to us but your baby won't know the combo is weird! Keep trying new foods too and I bet you'll find something she just loves.
Answer:
I would agree with Lou - keep trying to mix the foods with cereal and lessen the amount of cereal each day. It can take several tries with a particular food before your baby will develop a taste for it. At the same time I wouldn't stress too much if she isn't eating a lot of solid food. At six months breast milk or formula should still provide most of her nutrients anyway. She'll get it eventually!
With my second son I mixed just about all of his veggies with apples at first because he wouldn't eat the veggies by themselves. Eventually I stopped adding the apples and he adjusted to the straight veggies just fine.