Working mom starting solids to 5 month old.

Viki,


Firstly congratulations and I am sure you are loving each moment with the baby. I have a 8th Month old daughter
and she started at daycare at 5 months too.


1) earth best organic cereal is good and certified so you dont have to worry about offering it to the
baby. If time permits you can also make food ast home it will give you chance to add some lentils and
veggies. Here is what we did


a) When you start solids for the first time babies are not sure how to swallow it becuase
they are used of taking just BM/formula. So we first time mixed one small spoon of ready made
rice cereal in BM and offered it to the baby, it took her about a week to get used to feeding with spoon


b) Once she started doing better we used about on ounce of milk and mixed rice cereal with it, her portion size slowly increased to 2 ounces rice cereal over month or so


c) I made home made fruit purees like apple, pear, banana, carrot


d) Once she was doing good with rice cereal, I started making home made rice cereal for her.


Procedure: I cleaned 1 cup of organic rice, washed it and left it for drying, cleaned half cup of moong dal and left it for drying too.I grinded the miztures seperately and put poowder mixture in air tight container.
Every morning I take about tablespoon of cereal add veggies like spinach, caroot, tomato, beetroot, kale and cook it. Once it cools down I just grind it one pulse and pack it for babies day care.
As rice is cleaned it should not take more than 15 minutes to cook and pack.


e) We do the same thing with fruits steam the fruits and make puree




2) I have kept aside to Medela BM bottles and pack the solids in that bottles. Packing the solids in the bottle helps the daycare provider to heat the food without spilling as they use bottle warmer.






3) If your baby is not sitting up right yet, you can place him on your lap hold him with one hand and offer the food. If he is sitting upright than high chair is good option.




4) Other tips would be try to speak to daycare provider and have schedule for baby. Request the daycare provider to always follow the schedule like nap time, feeding time etc.


I hope information helps.

 

Viki,

Sorry to hear that son was down with cold and ear infection, My daughter got sick in first three days of joining day care because it was the first time it did take some time for her to recover. As parents we were doubting our decision for sending her to group day care but things got better as time passed.

My daughter now loves her daycare and teachers, she on schedule now and teachers at daycare are very caring.

My daughters pediatrician is very supportive, she did mention that kids who go the
group day care catch cold on average every 3 weeks. It was hard to accept at first
but what I observed that now though she catches cold she is not so fussy as before and recovers faster than first time.

There immunity systems are building up hence dont worry too much , it is expected in the first year.

 

OP: Normally booster seat is preferred at later stages of baby life and high chair is pretty safe during early stage. It comes with a belt and table so there is no way your kid will jump or fall. Since you already got a booster seat and if your son is fine with it, then stick with it and IMO you should not buy high chair at all as he will be completely fine with booster till he is old enough to sit separately in dining chair ( which with my DD happened at 18 months) She wanted to sit like us and avoided her booster or high chair.