In the beginning, there was cereal (and it was NOT all good).

My sweet Sprout is a New Year's baby. That means that by May we were ready to think about solid foods. But my goodness, what a mine-field of possibilities! You don't want to start too early or the baby won't be able to digest the food, but if you start too late the baby may not tolerate foods. A baby who is on solids might sleep through the night, but is putting a 4 month old on solids for the good of the baby or the good of the Mom? And if it's for the good of the Mom, is it a selfish decision on her part, or is getting a good night's sleep enough of a benefit for both mother and child? Good Lord! All of this over a half tablespoon of powdered cereal and breast milk!

My older daughter, lovingly called Bug, ate everything that didn't eat her first until she hit her picky preschool phase. From the moment her instincts kicked in that she needed to nurse she was a voracious eater. Needless to say, introducing cereal to her was not an issue. While Sprout is a good eater, she doesn't have the same intensity toward food that her big sister has.

Her first solid food (other than dog or cat hair, which I guess doesn't count), was rice cereal. Rice cereal is considered the mainstay of first foods because it has the least allergic reactions. My kids didn't read that chapter. Rice cereal constipated Bug and it made Sprout scream. So we tried oatmeal. Sprout liked the rice cereal, even though it caused her gas pain, but oatmeal tastes like cardboard. I was almost hysterical - the first few days of solids had gone ok, but now it was awful.

I called the pediatrician for help. For the first time in almost 4 years, I got worthless advice - clearly the well-meaning nurse had never had a child who had this reaction to cereal. I polled people on Facebook. There I was directed to an article on why babies shouldn't eat starchy foods: http://www.helium.com/items/95770-ptyalin-why-babies-should-not-be-fed-starchy-foods. It gave me a lot of food for thought. I planned to lay off cereal for awhile, but then she clearly needed the calories. Even as a newborn she was able to sleep 3 hours at night, but she was up every 2.5 hours during the no-cereal time.

The more I thought about the article, the more I had a few issues with it. I realize that the issue in the article is when ptyalin is produced in order to digest the starchy carbohydrates, but the suggestion that babies should be fed primarily a diet of vegetables, fruit, and protein brings up another issue of digestibility all together, IMO. What kind of protein? Soy proteins are hard for me to digest let alone a baby, and there are some studies that they aren't so good for us, either. If starches shouldn't be introduced until the baby has the teeth to chew them, why should meat be introduced earlier? As for Asian babies tolerating starches more easily because their mothers chew the food for them, well, how many Moms and Tokoyo or Hong Kong are still doing this? And the reason why solids are encouraged by 6 months is because the babies have started to deplete their iron supply and breast milk doesn't supply iron. Iron rich veggies are usuall not babies' favorites - spinach, broccoli, kale, etc. So how does the baby get enough of that?

Anyway, the questions in my mind were enough to lead me to follow the course my doctor suggested, whether it be for right or wrong. I just needed to find a cereal that Sprout would actually like and liked her back. After driving to 4, yes FOUR, grocery stores in the Madison area, I finally found Gerber's barley cereal at Woodman's. It wasn't organic, but at this point, I just didn't care. Sprout didn't love the barley, but she ate it. I also picked up some Earth's Best cereal which blended oatmeal, barley, and spelt. I introduced that later on and it was well tolerated and possibly even enjoyed. Thank goodness!