Not Quite Ready

Welcome to NaBloPoMo day, um, 2? Day 6? Curses for not starting on Nov. 1!

Here's an update on the cereal experience: it's on hold for the time being. Yes, that's right, I haven't fed Squiggles his rice cereal now for about a week. Why? Well, it certainly isn't because he wasn't getting used to it.


Not only was he getting used to eating cereal, it seemed he was even enjoying it. I had decreased the amount of milk so that it was less of a liquid consistency. We even made it up to 1 1/2 tbsp of cereal mixed with the same amount of milk, and he was eating almost all of that.

What made me stop feeding him the cereal was how it was affecting his sleeping pattern. Isn't starting babies on solid food supposed to help sleep through the night better? Well, not us. Squiggles had been sleeping just fine through the night, but after a few days of cereal feedings, he started waking up during the night. More than once per night. And it was getting harder and harder to put him down at night. We'd get him to sleep, and, as soon as we'd lower him into his crib, he'd wake up. And scream. It was not fun. Chef and I were at a loss as to what to do, so I suggested we stop feeding Squiggles the cereal. That was the only explanation; we hadn't started him on any other new routines lately.

Squiggles is sleeping just fine through the night now. The first couple of nights, we had a hard time getting him to go down - he'd wake up about an hour or so after we put him down - but now he's back to sleeping around 9 hours through the night. I'm not sure what really happened; maybe he was getting too much gas because of the cereal? Rice is supposed to be very gentle and benign for baby digestive systems. I shared this experience with a friend of mine who said that her daughter had problems with rice cereal, too, and that they had better success with oatmeal because of the higher fiber content.

So I will get Squiggles some oatmeal and we will try again. Maybe I'll even try a different time of day - late morning or early afternoon as opposed to the evening. But I'm in no hurry. He's gaining weight (18.5 lbs!) and sleeping through the night and isn't even six months old yet, so I don't see any need to rush this whole transition to solids. Plus there's that tiny part of me that doesn't want to him to grow up.