rice cereal vs. barley

[tere]

My DD has started solids but the rice cereal is making her gassy. Friends have suggested barley. I am nervous to do so since everyone says rice first! DD definitely needs some solids because she is now eating almost every two hours even at night!

[ellies mom]

Well, it sounds like you gave her rice first, so now try the barley. I think rice first was more of a suggestion anyhow. If barley doesn't go over, then try oatmeal.

Good luck.

[ErinMC]

We had the same problem when we started DS on solids: the rice cereal made him really gassy. So we switched to oatmeal, and it did the trick: much less gas. He loves it and it's also recommended as a first cereal. I think rice cereal is just the most common.

HTH!

[ht265]

Is that right? My son started diarrhea 4 days after I started him rice cereal. First I thought he had infection. Then my ped told me to try different formula, although he has been on the same formula for a while. Now after three weeks, he's still having diarrhea, and we are trying the last kind of formula, soy formula.
Maybe I should stop rice cereal and see...

[essnce629]

I don't think it really matters. We started with oatmeal first (just because that's the box he picked when I lined them all out in front of him :)), he hated it, so then we went to pears which he loved, and later we did rice cereal. I started solids at 6 months and didn't really stick to the "cereals have to be started first" rule, which I think applies more to babies who are given solids earlier than 6 months. We did homemade organic pureed foods for 2 months and then at 8 months he wanted to feed himself so we went to finger foods and haven't looked back.

***Latia
Conner 8/19/03
http://www.babiesonline.com/babies/a/aug2003angel
http://www.gynosaur.com/assets/ribbons/ribbon_gold_12m.gif One year and counting!
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[houseof3boys]

We never used rice early on and started with barley! It was great for us and we never experienced a lot of the gas and constipation probs that lots do with rice cereal.

Barley gets the thumbs up! :)

[DebbieJ]

We started with pureed fruits and veggies and then introduced cereal at 7 months (per our ped). Rice went over just fine, but when we tried barley B was gassy and miserable. You just never know! Oatmeal was and still is a big hit, though.

~ deb
Mommy to my sweet boy
B born 12/03
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[tarahsolazy]

We are also starting with oatmeal, the baby kind, next to the rice cereal in the store. We are going very slow here, 7mo and DS has only had it a few times. Solids don't always "fill up" babies, though. They are much less calorically dense than breastmilk or formula. Some people feel that the starch in the cereals takes longer to digest than milk, so it "lasts longer". This hasn't been supported in the pediatric research on the topic, but, anecdotally, some families really feel it makes babies sleep longer, go longer between feeds, etc.