Giving Rice Cereal a Try

During Peyton's one month Pediatrician visit, she mentioned to me while going over everything, shots, etc., that they do not recommend starting babies on solid foods until they are 6 months old. I was confused about this since I always thought that you can start giving your baby cereals around 4 months. When I asked why not, she just said that they felt it was not necessary (she provided no medical reasons) and that milk should be enough until the baby is 6 months. Well I thought to myself that we will have to see about that when the time came. Even my mom and Peyton's Grammy who assisted me with the visit that day was a little confused about why they did not recommend it. So, I did a little research on the internet and only found opinions mostly from other mothers on why you should or should not give cereals under 6 months of age. I read that it was "old school" and even opinions that it was "dangerous". But no medical reason why it was dangerous other than that a baby's digestive system may not be mature enough to digest solids. Well, I can understand a younger baby, but by four months, there should be no problems. I mean, our parents did it and we all turned out okay. I think they go overboard with the dos and don'ts of pregnancy and babies. The opinions from moms who had started their babies on cereal is reason enough for me. So I guess it is a personal choice. I read one of my mommy-friend's baby blog Monday night about starting her four month old on rice cereal that very same day. I felt relieved to know of another mommy that felt the same as I did. But what really sealed the deal on my decision is when Peyton started crying for his bottle every two to three hours. Waking up once at night was no longer happening. At that point is when I knew that it was time for sure to introduce cereal. I was at the store Monday morning, on the phone with my mom asking what cereal to get. They had every kind of baby cereal you can think of. But the only cereal my mom was sure of is the rice cereal, so I started with that on Monday night by mixing it with his formula. Then I will probably try the oatmeal cereal. I wanted to make sure he did okay with the rice before I started spoon feeding it to him. So far he did okay. He gave me a poopy diaper, so no constipation. So I started spoon feeding him. He did pretty good. The first couple of times I had to keep putting the bottle in his mouth to get him to swallow. After doing that a couple of times, he caught on to what he is suppose to do.