How to Start Feeding and Introducing Foods to your Grain Free (Paleo) Baby

Where in the world do you start feeding your child, especially if you’re wanting to start grain free/ Paleo? First, I have an entire post on Ottava’s First Foods and what we started her out on. She started on liver and broth. Beyond that first post I don’t have much more resource on feeding your baby. That’s why I’ve started this series on how to feed your grain free baby. I am no baby food expert, but I’ve read around a lot and have experimented with my own kiddo (all good experiments though).

My heart is to raise her eating good foods that fuel her body, allow her gut to grow strong and healthy, and open her up to new and different flavors. Hopefully some younger years of eating well will set her up to make healthy choices as she gets older and ca make her own decisions. Plus, I’d love to have her avoid some of the health challenges and sugar cravings I faced in my late teens and early 20’s. I want you to know this post and my suggestions come without judgment. There is no room to feel guilty about how you feed (or fed) your kids and that’s ok if you disagree with me.

Paleo(ish) Baby, yep, I think it’s possible to raise one of those. And I believe it’s best to fuel their bodies with the most nutrient dense foods while removing allergenic and inflammatory foods. I know that some people think it doesn’t matter what babies and kids eat. As long as their eating, quality of food doesn’t matter. I’d like to break that down for a second. It does matter, because their bodies and brains are developing at a rapid pace. The more nutrients you can feed them the better they will grow and develop.

I’m all for trusting little ones bodies. They know what how much they should eat and why they are eating it. They are smart. Just because they are smart doesn’t mean you can’t train their tastebuds and bodies to crave sugars and processed foods. Their bodies will become addicted just as fast as ours will. If you’re feeding your kid nutrient dense foods, I believe you will be surprised at the unique foods flavors they choose to eat.

Broccoli and Green Beans reheated with probiotics on top

Where do I start with feeding my baby?

This was really hard for me to get my mind around. How do I go from an exclusively breastfed baby (who never took a bottle) to eating real food? How crazy? It’s good though, they are learning how to eat and will do this for the rest of their life. They need more than breastmilk (or formula) than food. You should be giving food in addition to breastmilk, not in replacement of it. And that stays that way for the first year of life. 

This is what you want to look for in when to start your baby with solid foods:

• They can sit up on their own unassisted
• They have lost their tongue thrust reflex (wanting to push solids out of their mouth)
• At least 6 months old, I don’t believe babies under 6 months should start solids
• Baby shows interest in solid foods and wants to eat off of your plate
• Baby is starting to develop the pincer grasp, where they take food in-between their thumb and index finger

All babies are different in their development. I wouldn’t rush to feed solids. If your baby isn’t ready, that’s ok. Try again in a couple more week and be paying attention to the signs of food readiness.

Here’s my article on our first foods.

Egg Yolks sautéed in ghee. She doesn’t love eggs (I wish she did because they are so easy). She currently will eat them mixed with some peanut butter (14 months old)

What was our First Foods and Feeding Schedule Like at the Beginning of Solids?

I felt like it was important for Ottava to start her relationship with solid food to be more of a play activity than an eating activity. I wanted her to play with her food, feel the texture, smell the flavors, and taste different textures and flavors. Kids tend to be more picky when they aren’t allowed to touch their food and make it a sensory activity. I wasn’t concerned with how much she ate.

We started with her eating food 1x/day at 6 months and moved to 3x/day around 8-8.5 months. The first two months she would eat 1 teaspoon – 2 Tablespoons of food at her one meal. Trust me, she wasn’t getting very many calories. She was still getting most nutrition and calories from me in her breastmilk.

Ottava started to love food and want to eat more and try more foods around 8-8.5 months old. She was consuming food 3x/day, nursing about 6-7x/day and eating way more solid food than I ever thought she would. I wanted to trust her little body and I fed her until she was done eating.

I remember hearing the saying “food for fun until their one”. I agree and yet disagree with it. Yes, babies don’t get all of their calories and nutrients from solid foods. Ottava started cutting her nursing sessions down after 12 months old. But she was consuming a lot of solid foods too. So much so that I had to ask some mom friends of mine. They said that saying can sometimes feel like babies only eat little bits and pieces of food until they are a year old. I didn’t see that with Ottava. She ate at least a 1/2 cup of food each meal and sometimes seemed like she had a hollow leg she was putting her food into.

Bottom line, don’t force-fed your baby. Let them do a lot of the feeding themselves, and trust them to tell you when they are full! If you’re feeding them good quality foods, you can trust your babies body to tell them when to stop eating. They still have that built in hunger mechanism.

Sweet Potato, coconut oil, and ghee. This is a staple in our home. She loves cinnamon on a lot of veggies. I always add some good healthy fats too. As Ottava got older, sweet potatoes are served in chunks with coconut oil, ghee, , and cinnamon. 

How to Introduce New Foods to Baby

When Ottava was first learning how to eat solid foods I made sure I introduced foods slowly. I knew she wasn’t going to have a lot of food allergens to simple foods like vegetables, but I wanted to make sure to introduce them to her slowly in case there was a reaction I could isolate that food. Also, digesting solid foods was a new thing for her. The easier I could make it to break down, the better. Single foods or simple foods are best for that.

I introduced new foods to Ottava 4 days apart. Sometimes every 3. We started with liver and broth. We moved to sweet potatoes, green beans, carrots, broccoli, chicken, beef roast, egg yolk, spinach and then the list goes on. I also started adding some coconut oil to her food for some good fats around 8 months old.

One thing with baby food I didn’t know right away, make sure to keep the salt content low. Especially table salt because babies under 12 months old don’t need it. I wouldn’t ever salt her food. And if I was giving her something for Phil and I too, I would take some out before I salted it or made sure it was healthy pink salt used, which is all we use in our home.

We made a personal decision to try and encourage Ottava to like the unique food flavors as much as she can and as long as she can. I didn’t want her to crave sweet foods. We didn’t introduce fruit until around 9 months and then it was pears and eventually berries. At 12 months I gave her some grapefruit and orange and just recently (15 months) she had some melon.

She loves fruit so much I limit her because I know it tastes so good. I give her some type of organicberry daily because they are easy and it’s summertime. When organic fresh berries skyrocket in price in the wintertime I’m sure I’ll cut back on how many I give her.

Avocado… always a staple in our household. 

Introducing Allergenic Foods to Babies

This paragraph is my personal opinion. Some may disagree with me, but I wanted to share my thoughts and allow you to think this through and find what’s best for your kiddo.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to introducing allergenic foods in babies. The first is to avoid all allergenic foods in babies. The second is to introduce a small amount so their body can get use to it and not create an allergen agains the food.

I fall somewhere in the middle of the two. I’m ok with introducing a lot of allergens, but have made a personal decision to keep grains and gluten out of Ottava’s diet all together. She doesn’t do cow’s dairy because she’s still sensitive to it, but she has had butter many times and I’ll still give it to her at times to try and get her body used to it.

I started giving Ottava whole eggs around 9 months old. I was sick of separating the egg from the white and decided I’ll see how she does. She did great. She doesn’t love eggs that much in general, but she never had an issue with them. We introduced peanut butter around 10 months, almonds at 11 months, and a tiny bit of chocolate (cocao powder) around a year. I haven’t given her much in the form of almonds because I didn’t want her to have a hard time digesting them.

Chicken pureed with broth, tai-colored carrots, and boiled pears with cinnamon

Chunks or No Chunks (Baby Led Weaning) Thoughts

I wasn’t that comfortable with her getting bigger chunks of food right away. Before I was a mom I would have told you I would have done baby led weaning in a heartbeat. When I actually had a kid I realized I was stressed with her learning to eat. I would puree her food in a thick and textured puree and then take it step by step from there. When I made her meat I always made sure to mix it with broth and puree it very good.

Around 9 months Ottava was sick of the purees and we went to little chunks. She was frustrated she couldn’t pick them up and was fussy when eating. I realized she wanted to be able to grab her foods. The chunks were still very small, but I increased the texture of her food.

I continued to increase the food size she could eat as she got older and seemed ready. I know Baby Led Weaning rules don’t want you to go back and forth between purees and chunks. They want you to follow it their way without exception. I did a mixture and it worked well for us and I wasn’t uncomfortable with the process.

At 13 months she started to eat the vast majority of her food in large chunks. I still chop her meat very small because I think it’s a choking hazard and it’s also hard to digest. I believe the small chunks really help her with digesting it and I’m comfortable keeping that small.

Now I give her 1/2 strawberries, whole olives, strips of goat cheese, whole steamed carrots and other veggies. She loves to chew and bite even though she still doesn’t have molars. It’s amazing how well they can “cheese” with no teeth.