How to successfully feed a baby rice cereal?

Question

My baby is a little over five months and she seems ready to start eating cereals because she will grab with open arms to her bottle and open her mouth and she can sit on her own. But when I try and feed her the step one cereal I put the cereal in and it comes back out. I do it again..I put teh cereal in it says for a couple seconds comes right back out. I am wondering if anyone has any helpful suggestions on how to feed her with out it all coming back out and putting it in her bottle isnt an option.

Answer 1

This is normal. Beleive it or not she is getting some of the cereal into her tummy. But it is a new sensation, it doesn't feel like milk/formula from a bottle. Infants don't do very many things like adults do and one of them is eating. Just "scrape" off what comes out back onto the spoon and put it in her mouth.

Answer 2

My baby is about the same age and he also just started taking solids. The tongue thrust thing is pretty common when babies first learn to swallow solids. It's an instinct that most babies have that prevent them from ingesting things that could be harmful. It starts to dissipate right around 4-6 months and babies will soon start to put EVERYTHING in their mouths. Some people suggest waiting until 6 months to allow for this to pass (and other reasons like allergies etc.).

But if you are going to try to feed solids, you need to make sure that the rice cereal is very thin and soupy at the start. Build up to something a bit thicker as your baby gets used to swallowing food taken from a spoon. Also, if your baby is breastfed, use breastmilk to thin the cereal instead of formula.

Try this once a day and after a while, your baby will get the hang of it. It might take a few weeks. Most babies wear more of their first attempts at solids than they eat. This is totally normal.

And you shouldn't be putting the cereal in the bottle. Some babies with reflux use rice cereal thickened formula but this shouldn't be that common. Your baby will get the hang of it over time and with practice.

Finally, don't try to feed your baby when she is starving. You want her to be hungry but not too hungry that the whole exercise gets frustrating. My baby also tends to like his cereal quite warm. I find this helps him want to eat more than when it's at room temp.

Good luck!

Answer 3

When I started feeding my daughter rice cereal she wasn't exactly excited about the taste, I think. So I added some pear baby fruit to the cereal to make it a little more tasty. The pear also helped her not to constipate and rice cereal can often do when you're first starting to introduce it. Now, my daughter loves her cereal with fruit and at nine months old she's eating it willingly and with other fruits mixed in.

Hope this helps!

Answer 4

The rice cereal will come out no matter what. The whole spoon and solid thing is absolutely new to them. Not everybody learn how to ride a bike without training wheels, let alone learn how to ride it in one day. She's learning the concept of food in her mouth and eventually learn that she's suppose to swallow it all.

My son does the same thing with the cereal. It doesn't always stay in his mouth. I just keep scooping it back in his mouth till he eats all of it. As for the bottle, it's just natural instinct for them to go back to something they are use to. I feed my son rice cereal once a day so he can get use to the spoon and solid thing.

So the answer to this question is...patience.

Answer 5

It is completely normal. Babies thrust the food out with their tongue - scoop it back up and put it back in their mouths (they will spit it out again, yes). It takes a few weeks for them to learn how to eat cereal/baby food. My son started baby cereal and fruit/veggie purees about a month ago. He only just recently started getting the hang of it. He was thrusting the food out with his tongue until recently.

If it is the taste that she seems not to like, try mixing it with baby applesauce, bananas, etc. Just keep at it - give it time.

Answer 6

If the cereal comes back out it means that your baby is not yet ready to take solids. Her tongue reflex (pushing things out of her mouth) is still strong. If you feed her today and she pushes everything out, try again after 3 days. But do not put it in her bottle because this can cause choking.

Answer 7

Some babies just take a little longer with new textures and taste. Try mixing the cereal with a little bit of formula/breastmilk(whatever you have been feeding her) instead of or in addition to water. She's just playing with it, feeling it, trying to figure out what to do with it, so just be consistent and patient. Also, you can mix in a little bit of her favorite baby food(like apples or bananas)to give it some sweetness. You can also play with the consistencies...make it a bit more watery and then try it more lumpy and see if there's a difference. My son took a few weeks to really eat the cereal...once the figured it out, he loved it!

Answer 8

Very typical for them to push it back out because it's bland. How do you mix it up? Do you use her formula or just water? Also how thick do you make it? Is it runny or oatmeal type thick? Your best bet is to mix the rice cereal with her formula or breast milk if your pumping and make it very runny to start. Because if it's too thick it can cause her gag reflexes to work and possibly choke on it. Another little tip to try that I used on all three of my kids and I will use on this next one is when I started them on rice cereal, I mix a drop or two of vanilla extract in with it and they loved it. It got them to eat the bland flavored rice cereal right away. Good luck! Before too long she'll be pulling food off your dinner plate to taste!

Answer 9

Try putting baby food in it. My son was a pig at 2 weeks old we gave him cereal because he was eating a 8 oz bottle every 3 hours at 3 days old. She may not like the taste. Try oatmeal. Or give her straight baby food.

Answer 10

It's called the tongue-thrust reflex, it means she absolutelty isn't ready.

DO NOT make the cereal so thin that she has no choice but to swallow it. If she still has the tongue thrust reflex then more than likely her intestines are NOT ready for solid food. Humans are designed to work properly and safely, don't try to override it you will only end up causing problems.

QUOTE
"This is because babies are not capable of intentionally moving food to the back of their throats until after they have learnt to chew. And they do not develop the ability to chew until after they have developed the ability to reach out and grab things. Thus, a very young baby cannot easily put himself at risk because he cannot get the food into his mouth in the first place. On the other hand, the action used to suck food off a spoon tends to take the food straight to the back of the mouth, causing gagging. This means that spoon feeding has its own potential to lead to choking – and makes the giving of lumpy foods with a spoon especially dangerous.

It appears that a baby’s general development keeps pace with the development of his ability to manage food in his mouth, and to digest it. A baby who is struggling to get food into his mouth is probably not quite ready to eat it. It is important to resist the temptation to ‘help’ the baby in these circumstances since his own developmental abilities are what ensure that the transition to solid feeding takes place at the right pace for him. This process is also what keeps him safe from choking on small pieces of food, since, if he is not yet able to pick up small objects using his finger and thumb, he will not be able to get, for example, a pea or a raisin into his mouth. Once he is able to do this, he will have developed the necessary oral skills to deal with it. Putting foods into a baby’s mouth for him overrides this natural protection and increases the risk of choking.

Tipping a baby backwards or lying him down to feed him solid foods is dangerous. A baby who is handling food should always be supported in an upright position. In this way, food which he is not yet able to swallow, or does not wish to swallow, will fall forward out of his mouth, not backwards into his throat."
http://www.borstvoeding.com/voedselintroductie/vast_voedsel/rapley_guidelines.html#early
END QUOTE

Also many health organizations recommend against begining with infant cereals for many reasons. Some of these include:
-While rice is hypo-allergenich MOST babies can not actually digest grain until much later
-Infant cereals are empty calories with sythetic vitamins added, that is not a good example to set for a lifetime of healthy eating
-Solid food under 12 months is for fun and learning. Infant cereal is bland with almost no flavour, it has no texture. What exactly is the baby learning? Most other cultures start their baby on table food full of flavour and most other cultures do not have such picky children that will only eat fries and chicken nuggets.
-Have you read what is in infant cereal? Over processed rice and oil, with chemicals to improve "mouth feel". Whole grains can be processed into cereal. And oatbran is already ground to the right consisitancy if you choose to offer pureed food.
-Americans are carb addicted, and yet we continue to push carbs as the primary part of infant and toddler diets. Does that make sense? Breastmilk/Formula are almost all carbs, babies don't need more.