On starting solids, the second time around

I did a post when I started solids with SB and BW, which you can find here.  Yet again, I was such a first-time mom.  No cereal - it's empty calories! No iron supplements - we'll feed iron-rich foods! 

Result?  Two anemic babies.

Not serious anemia, but we had to do twice-daily iron drops, SB and BW seemed particularly vulnerable to illness, which then caused their hemoglobin levels to drop again, and it was a months-long process of iron supplements, frequent scanning of the internet and nutrition labels to find iron-rich foods, and finger-sticks to check levels.  And iron drops?  Horrid.  It's like drinking liquid pennies. Oh, and they can stain teeth, so they should be mixed with something.

The other result is I cringe when I see women commenting on various parenting sites that "food before one is just for fun" or quoting kellymom.com as the end all/be all of reliable sources on the high level of absorption of iron from breastmilk, or "cereal is garbage and tastes terrible", or "cereal is just filler and has no nutritional value" - this last one just kills me.  It does have nutritional value - it has iron in it.  Even if the iron in BM is highly absorbed, it's not enough, and if you have kids that aren't interested in eating iron-rich foods (like SB in particular), anemia is a real possibility. I've even seen some moms post that it is OKAY for your baby to be anemic.  Iron is important for brain development.  I'm not willing to sacrifice brain development because baby cereal doesn't taste very good.  You know what else doesn't taste very good? Iron drops.

SO, Nugget has been sampling the baby cereal (although we skipped rice and went right to oatmeal). And, as I would expect of my roly-poly chubbers baby, she loves eating like a big girl. 

Although my experiences with SB and BW have changed my direction a bit this time around, it's also given me good knowledge so I don't have to rely on cereal as a sole iron source.  We'll be offering blended meat and blended beans (SB and BW ate lots of beans, and still do - great source of iron). We also offered SB and BW blackstrap molasses frequently - as a syrup on pancakes, as a sauce on chicken, as a dipping sauce for meatballs, and they loved it.  I'm not sure if they would still eat it - they haven't had it in a while, and it's a pretty strong flavor, but it was very versatile for us, and SB liked it so much that she wouldn't eat plain chicken but would eat it if it was drizzled with blackstrap molasses.

In other news...sob.  My baby is already moving on to solids.  6 months went fast, I'm sure the next 6 will only go faster.