Is rice cereal supposed to be so soupy? (Just starting solids)

[quikeye]

Hi all! Kai had his 1st taste of rice cereal today & except for the dribbly-ness, all went well! I followed the directions on the earth's best package, 1 tbsp cereal to 3 tbsp bm-- but it was sooo watery! Like, almost just like regular bm! Is it supposed to be like this?

I was all excited for ds to have *cereal* but it's more like drinking/sucking bm off of a spoon... when can I make it thicker, should I?

It was so fun though! :) How exciting!! I was hesitant since, well, I like the ease & closeness of bf'ing and for all of the reasons to wait... but this is pretty cool!

[Jacksonvol]

Yup, it really is thin. I think we made it a little thicker after about 4 weeks. DD was getting pretty good at swallowing and making little chewing motions.

Lisa

[pritchettzoo]

There are package directions? ;) I made it pretty thick to begin with--that was my gauge as to whether DD was ready for solids. If she didn't know what to do with it, I was going to wait some more (we waited until 6 mos and actually started with mashed avocado, but that's neither here nor there). I'd say the texture of applesauce maybe? Anyway, IMO, the thin, dribbly stuff is for babies who aren't yet ready for solids. Be careful feeding too much rice cereal though because it can be constipating, especially with the added iron.

HTH!

Anna

[nwaddellr]

I was also surprised at howc thin the "cereal" was at first, but I started thickening it fairly quickly - every week for a month I added another 1/2 Tb of cereal to the mix, and then dropped the time to wait between thickenings.

One quick aside - don't let the cereal sit too long if you're using EBM for the moisture since it has enzymes in it that will break down the starches in the cereal and make it even more watery!

[amp]

We didn't start ours quite so thin. I think ours had a consistency of maybe applesauce or maybe yogurt. It wasn't liquidy. DS did fine with it at that consistency and then later we moved on to a more oatmealy consistency.

[Momof3Labs]

ITA all around, except we didn't start with avocado LOL!

[quikeye]

Thanks for the advice all :) Maybe it was more watery since I made it before we bf'd (interesting fact!); tomorrow I'll mix it after a feeding. I think I'll make it thicker too, he was having a good time opening his mouth and closing on the spoon, but it didn't *feel* like starting solids to me since it wasn't like the farina papi and i eat for breakfast! :)

[pritchettzoo]

Definitely breastfeed first! You don't want the baby to fill up on solids. I think most experts say to wait 30 mins to an hour after BFing to offer solids. We're still doing that now at almost 10 mos. :)

Anna