Introducing Food at Five Months Old

When the time rolled around to introduce to Sadie to food, for the life of me I couldn’t remember what I did or when I did it with Hadley. I felt like a first-time mom sitting behind my laptop reading article after article about how to best start food.

Because I know this is a heavily researched and talked about topic among parents of infants, I figured I’d document what’s personally worked for us this time around – what foods Sadie has tried, when we tried them, etc.

Introducing Food at Five Months Old

We started introducing Sadie to purees at five months + six days old. We started with bananas, apples, and sweet potatoes. We introduced a new food every three days to monitor for allergies.

Next we ventured over green beans, peas, and peaches. For the first four weeks, I only put her in her highchair and fed her once a day. I viewed this as a month of learning how to eat and easing into it.

You guys know that my friend Meg has a daughter, Brynn, who’s just a month older than Sadie. I joke with Meg a lot that I selfishly love being able to watch what she does with Brynn and then basically copy her with Sadie a few weeks later. I noticed Brynn eating Mum Mum crackers and doing well with them, so I grabbed a box for Sadie. She got her first Mum Mum at six months + 10 days old. I was shocked how quickly she figured out how to hold the cracker and bring it to her mouth to eat. I started sticking these packages in my diaper bag and giving them to Sadie when she needed something to munch on when we were out and about.

At the 6.5 month mark we gave her Puffs, which is a great little snack to teach infants how to pinch and bring to their mouths. We also started pureed packets for when we’re on the go.

Sadie’s now 7.5 months, and she’s eating new foods all the time.

In the last week she’s had several of Gerber’s Third Foods, turkey, corn, sweet potato bites, Gerber’s Lil Crunchies, a half of a whole banana (what a mess, but she loved it!), Gerber’s Arrowroot cookies, and more.

By the eight month mark I’m pretty sure I’ll start giving her more of what we’re eating on a regular basis.

Though I can’t remember the exact details about how I introduced food to Hadley, I do recall that I was very timid and followed suggested monthly charts to a tee. I’m not sticking to these charts nearly as closely as I did with Hadley. I personally find them a little dramatic and slow when it comes to introducing foods, but I’m not a doc, so who knows. 🙂

Though I’m not sticking to a chart per se when it comes to timing, I do have this baby food chart printed out and hanging in our kitchen. I use it primarily for ideas for what to buy at the grocery store so that I can let Sadie try as many foods as possible.

Let’s chat!

What advice do you have as I move forward with introducing new foods for Sadie? What worked for your own kiddos?