What comes first formula or rice cereal?

Question

When feeding baby rice cereal, do you give rice cereal then formula or formula then rice cereal? Or does it matter?

Answer 1

Well I usually give solids first and "wash em" down with a bottle..remember your little ones belly can only hold 30-60ml of solid/fluid. Also so you don't "waste" calories you can add the formula to the baby cereal to make it more nutritious than adding water. So your baby will have formula and cereal, then just give her the left over for formula to drink...Hope this helps :)

Answer 2

Formula first! If you're wanting to incorporate cereal into the baby's diet, then do so by mixing the cereal with formula, stage 1 fruit, or 100% juice. However, make sure not to mix the cereal and use a bottle as means of feeding the child due to risk of inhalation; always feed cereal from a bowl.

Answer 3

Give some formula first...then the cereal...then let the baby finish the bottle after the spoon feed. In the beginning the rice cereal is as much as teaching the baby how to spoon feed - not so much about the nutrition. The bulk of baby's nutrition should be from the formula - not the spoon.

Answer 4

It is recommended (and also just makes sense!) to always feed the baby it's liquid (breast or formula) first, then it's solid food, in this case the rice cereal. Rice cereal has no fiber, therefore it can cause constipation so it is best for baby to have the formula in their stomach first to thin out the rice cereal to avoid constipation.

Never give a baby cereal in their bottle!

Answer 5

Do whatever you want. You are the only that knows what your baby wants or needs. """You don't mix them in the bottle b/c then they will get used to "drinking " cereal and and it also makes them gain weight faster""" This statement is untrue and just a myth. Parents that have a baby with GERD are told to put rice in the babies bottle to help thicken the formula and reduce the amount of flow back up the esophagus during a reflux episode. If this is so dangerous then it should not be acceptable for any babies. I work in the NICU and in pediatrics and have never seen a baby that has had rice put in the bottles with this kind of outcome. As well, I had three of them with GERD and put rice in all of their bottles. No allergies, great eaters, none of them were overweight, and they all were eating off of a spoon by the time they were 4 months old. I have seen babies in the NICU being bottle fed with rice added into the bottle. This is just a myth and not a FACT.

Answer 6

The formula would be more important then the cereal. I know we think of solid food as having more nutritional content then liquids but that is the opposite for babies. All of thier actual needs in the first year are met by breastmilk or formula, with solids being a bonus.
Plus, when a baby gets fussy a bottle is more calming for them to eat, then when they are calm you can try the cereal.

Answer 7

Generally, some of the formula is used to make up the cereal (so that the child takes in the same amount of formula as before and not extra). In my experience, the cereal is given first when the child is most hungry, so that she is more inclined to eat it. It matters in that the whole idea is to add solid foods to the baby's diet and she will be more apt to eat it if she is really hungry and more apt to refuse it if she is already well-fed. Good luck!

Answer 8

when I started my son on rice cereal I put it in the bowl and had his bottle ready. I gave him a few bites of the cereal and then gave him his bottle. I found that if I gave him his bottle first he refused to eat his other foods. Also the person above that claims to be a nurse should know better than to put cereal in a baby's bottle. Experts warn against this because the baby can choke on it!

Answer 9

Start with formula first until baby is about 8-9 months when solids play more of a nutritional part in baby's diet. Then, you can do cereal first, then formula. That's what I'm doing with my 8 month old and he's been doing fine.

Answer 10

A tablespoon is two and a half teaspoons. It's about the size of the larger spoons that come with regular silverware sets. Not a heaping scoop, but not flattened out. The scoop that comes with the formula is a little over two tablespoons. I wouldn't add cereal to the formula either. Instead, I would feed cereal with a spoon to the baby at that age - very thinned out and liquidy until he gets the hang of it. Maybe he'll slurp it out of the spoon.