what izzy’s eating at 9 months old

as promised, a post all about what we feed izzy right now! she is still breastfeeding, despite me planning to stop sooner than i did with arlo, i haven’t been able to wean since she refuses a bottle soooo it is what it is! i’ll probably end up nursing until the dr says she can go without formula (that was 11months for arlo but izzy is much smaller and we have a different doctor now, so we’ll see!)

i haven’t put tons of energy into BLW or anything like that, if you haven’t noticed, i’m not really that type of mom anyway! i am much more of the kind who just kinda wings it. i followed @solidstarts but i haven’t actually done or used a single thing i’ve seen there.

but i did get lots of questions on her eating so i figured a full post was in order! here we go.

how we started izzy on solids

i was super eager to start arlo on solids as soon as his dr gave us the go ahead at 4 months old, but with your second kid all of that stuff just sounds more exhausting right?!

so we first gave izzy solids probably around 5 or 5.5 months, we just tried a food here or there but didn’t go too hard in the beginning.

we did a lot of purees, initially cooking her food ourselves and having her try a bunch of different vegetables.

ruling out food allergies

i got a lot of messages from scared moms that were nervous to give their baby common allergens, but we don’t have a lot of food allergies in our family, so i just wanted to rule them out right off the bat.

so her first foods were eggs and peanut butter!

we were conscious to give her allergens on weekdays versus weekends, just in case she did have a reaction it would be easier to get her into a dr. luckily she didn’t have any issues so we’ve just continued to incorporate them into her diet.

transitioning from purées

we didn’t plan on transitioning her quickly, but she we kind of followed her lead. even before she got her first teeth (just recently), she was pretty determined to chew food.

so instead of straight up BLW, we started out just making her soft foods a little chunkier. (we did the same method with arlo.)

originally i would blend the foods i cooked her down, then instead i would mash them with a fork. it only took her a little bit to get used to chewing and because she loves food so much i think she was extra committed to the challenge haha.

her daily eating schedule

730am wake and nurse

830/9am eat breakfast

12pm wake and nurse

1/130pm eat lunch

430pm wake and nurse

530/6pm eat dinner

645 bedtime nurse

what foods i buy/make for her

when we first started feeding her solids, we were just cooking her simple foods but i signed up for little spoon to have stuff ready to feed her in the fridge. i like it, but we do find some of the blends to lean way too sweet, and the purees are pretty thin.

i always have puffs on hand because she snacks on them all day and that’s how she got really good with her pincers. she’s not great at pouches yet, but my pediatrician doesn’t like them anyway unless we’re really in a rush. i’ve also gotten a few of these finger foods for her, she likes them fine!

things that i easily can whip up for her : chicken sausage (she loves! i get the kind that have bell peppers), any chicken (she’s very into chicken), frozen edamame (i just peel off the shell and break into halves or quarters for her), frozen peas, capers, mushrooms (i just saute in oil), she also loves these cauliflower hashbrowns.

we give her greek yogurt all the time when she keeps eating and eating and we have to fill her up so she’ll stop asking for food haha.

izzy’s favorite foods

ok i feel like i’ve been listing the same foods over and over, and she basically likes everything so this list might be dumb, but i thought a concise list would be helpful possibly!

proteins: chicken, chicken sausage, turkey, salmon, hamburger, ground beef, crab

veggies: edamame, mushrooms, sweet potato, cauliflower,peas

other stuff: capers, pickles, peanut butter, greek yogurt, avocado

our feeding gear

your questions, answered

we started with simple foods like avocado, the allergens i said above and i think sweet potato.

the next ones we did were broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, carrots.

our pediatrician wanted us to prioritize having her try vegetables versus any sweet fruits so she wouldn’t take a liking to sweeter flavors

i didn’t, and my supply has been lesser than it was with arlo, but we’ve managed. i did stay as hydrated as possible and i also took postnatal vitamins as well as ate these prenatal bars (i like the PB one the best! use code MOLLY20)

the bottle refusal was very challenging in the beginning. she was fine with a bottle and even formula and then she just rejected both completely. we tried different bottles and different formulas until our pediatrician said don’t bother. if she’s going to take it she just has to be starving, so don’t make yourself crazy and just let it be. (that attitude shift helped me a lot.)

so that’s the reason we ended up amping up her solids intake so that i wouldn’t have to be the only way she could eat. now if i’m not around when she’s supposed to nurse, she eats solids instead and it’s been fine.

it took a while to find a cup she could drink from properly, we tried a lot of kinds!

we use these sippy cups which she drinks well from and i like that i can keep one in the diaper bag and it doesn’t really leak, and we use these ones with a straw (she mostly has learned how to drink from one!)

this i don’t know? we just took it very slowly and let her figure it out!

yes always! whenever we’re having dinner we always give her what we’re having. this is what my pediatrician recommends as well. so if we’re eating orange pasta for example, i’ll give her the little mush with bits of chicken and peas and little pieces of noodles. whatever we’re having, i just cut up little pieces for her to pick up herself and she loves to eat with us.

if we’re on the move with her and we’re going out to eat somewhere, i won’t worry about packing her anything besides puffs. we’ll just feed her scraps of whatever we’re eating! (we haven’t given her sushi yet though, so when we have sushi i just give her rice, edamame and she loves crab!)

if we’re on the move and we’re not eating while we’re out, i’ll usually just pack her a little tupperware of some small pieces of chicken, and other finger foods that we can feed to her easily without a spoon if we need to! capers and peas are other perfect foods to quickly throw in a container for her and she loves them.

once we got her on a nap routine, i stopped nursing before naps. so now i only nurse her when she first wakes up, and then she eats solids before she goes back to sleep. she has gotten used to it and barely ever seems to request nursing again (unless we’re out and i forget to feed her solids or she’s sick etc)

for bedtime, she’s also used to her routine and we put her down for the night long before she would be drowsy/nodding off while nursing. (that is, unless we’re out super late and then she’s asleep in the car and i gotta wake her up to nurse her before she goes down!) so she is still totally awake for her last feed, and then she goes into her room to get in her sleep sack and read a book before bed.