Rice Rice Baby

We introduced rice to Beck for the first time last week. It was a bit of a disaster. I waited until he was hungry and fed him 4 ounces of his 5 ounce bottle and then started on the rice cereal. He really didn't like it.

At first he would just spit it out but then he got to the point where he wouldn't even open his mouth. At that point, I had to be smarter than a 4 month old so I started pointing the bottle towards his mouth, he'd open up and then I'd sneak attack him from the side with a spoon tip of cereal. Sucker. Then he'd just spit it out so I guess who's the real sucker there. That's when I really put my college degree to work. I would act like I was giving him the bottle, next push in the spoon and then really give him the bottle. He didn't know if food was coming or going. MUAHAHAHA. All in all he didn't really eat any cereal.

So I remembered some veteran moms telling me they'd put cereal in their babies' bottles to get them to eat. I thought I'd try that. He had about 1 ounce left of rice/milk combo so I put it in the bottle and he sucked it down. 1 point mom, 0 points baby.

Although I ended up getting Beck to eat the rice, I decided to look it up online because I really had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know how much or how often so I decided to find out. Didn't really find out how much, didn't really find out how often but I didn't find out you should NEVER put rice in a baby's bottle.

OOOOPS

Apparently they can choke to death or cause obesity later in life. Babies have a mechanism that tells them when they're full by the volume of food they eat, when you add cereal you are increasing the calories but not the volume which makes babies overeat. While choking my baby is enough reason to stop putting cereal in a bottle, I think this may be a bigger obesity factor...

Now I'm rethinking "1 point mom, 0 points baby." I don't know if almost killing my son justifies a point. Maybe a half point.

So we retried the rice thing a couple days later. At first Beck hesitated, but eventually, and with a lot of reshoveling back into his mouth, he started eating it! What a BIG boy! He even got to the point where he had his mouth hanging open and following the spoon! He sure loves him some rice!