That's part of the reason why I nurse (it's so much healthier, and formula makes poop smell gross, and formula costs money, and bottles are equipment I'll have to wash, and I'm just lazy like that!) and that's why I don't buy baby food.
I was at the grocery store the other day, and I happened to walk by the baby food aisle. Now that Mace is eating solids (and boy, is he eating!!) I buy rice cereal to mix in with stuff, but that's it. I figure a couple dollars for a big box of ... powdered rice/oats (whatever!) ... is an okay thing to spend money on. I can't make it myself. But then I look at the baby food, and think, "75 cents for a baby's-fist's-sized jar of ... peas? I can buy a whole POUND of frozen peas for a buck!!" How hard is it to boil some peas and stick 'em in a blender?
I guess then the question is, "If you make your own baby food ... do you have to make it in small batches or something so it doesn't go bad before your baby gets around to eating it? Jars of baby food are preserved." Simple solution: Freeze it! When Carmen was a baby, I read that you can put your homemade baby food into ice cube trays and freeze them. Then when it's time to eat, you just thaw the food cubes in the microwave and feed them to your baby. Voila! I fill ice cube trays with pureed food, then when they're frozen I transfer them into a big plastic Ziploc bag so I can make another batch of baby food. Easy peasy.
This is the website I use as my guide for feeding my baby. I love it, and it gives me ideas of the new foods I can introduce to my baby and when.
Mace started eating food at the beginning of November (he was about 6.5 months old). We started with rice cereal mixed with milk, then introduced applesauce and bananas and zucchini and whatnot. Applesauce is easy because you can buy it in BIG jars. Just be sure to buy applesauce that's just apples and not sugar.
Sometimes Mace wasn't a big fan of the new food I'd introduce to him. So I'd put the new food into a bowl of applesauce-rice and feed him mostly applesauce and a little bit of the new food, then increase the amount of the new food in each spoonful until he was eating the new food without complaint. Other times, I'll take one thawed cube of food (carrots, zucchini, sweet potato, whatever) and mix it into a big bowl of applesauce. I figure the flavors are mild enough that he won't notice the difference, and most of his nutrition comes from milk anyway. Supposedly. That kid eats so much it makes me wonder how he packs it all down (but he refuses to nurse more ... he wants food and squawks for it!). :p
I love how communicative Mace is about food. When he wakes up in the morning, I nurse him, and about 20 minutes later we all have breakfast together. Usually Mark makes bacon and eggs (sometimes I do) and I put Mace in his high chair. He bounces around and kicks his legs and smiles and grunts at us, and when I *finally* have his food ready, he LUNGES at the spoon and gobbles up whatever I'm feeding him. And when he's still hungry, he grunts at me and cries. If we're out somewhere and he's hungry and he sees us eating, he cries and reaches towards the food and growls "Rawwwrr, aaarrrgggghhhh!!! Um-um-um-um!!" until I let him have a little taste of whatever I'm eating that is OK for him to eat (if I'm eating out, I always try to order something that contains something Mace-friendly, or I stick a banana and a spoon in my diaper bag.) and then he lets out this really cute content noise, like, "Aaaahhh, mmmm-nom."
And it kind of makes my heart burst with love for him.
One of my favorite foods to feed him is banana, because we cut the banana in half and scoop the fruit out with a spoon. It's very self-contained and easy to do. Some people like giving their babies solid foods in little pieces to play with in their hands and feed themselves ... but I think that's very messy, so I'd rather be a clean control freak and spoon-feed them myself. When Mace gets teeth, I'll give him little bits of food he can chew on (like red bell peppers) that won't get all mushy and messy and gross.
Our schedule goes something like this:
Morning - nurse, breakfast
Then I try to go to the gym after he takes a brief nap
Noonish - nurse, lunch
Afternoon nurse
He takes a short nap at some point in the afternoon, either before or after the afternoon nursing, depending on when he gets cranky
Evening - nurse, dinner, bed.
Most of the time, the food is some kind of combination of vegetable cube mixed with applesauce, and half a banana. Mace eats 1-2 bananas a day. O.o And yet he still poops (bananas and applesauce can constipate.)
Random fact of the day: applesauce constipates (you lose a lot of the fiber when you peel apples) but apple juice helps loosen things up (because of the liquids and sugar). Both are made of apples, but have different effects. But if you REALLY need to help your kid empty their bowels, PRUNE JUICE. You can either give it to them in a bottle, or mix it with baby cereal. Rice cereal will also contribute to constipation, so you might want to switch to oat cereal.
Okay, enough about poop.
My kid sleeps from 7 to 7. Sometimes even later. HOW DID I GET SO LUCKY?! And he started sleeping through the night in September, after we moved into our house and gave him his own room (instead of, you know, our closet.)
I used to wake Mace up to nurse him around 10 or 11 before I went to bed (you know how cows love to be milked in the morning and feel uncomfortable? I HAVE SO MUCH EMPATHY FOR COWS. YOU MEN HAVE NO IDEA.) but then there were a few nights where Mace was not interested in nursing and seemed cranky that I would wake him up in the middle of the night. Your body adjusts to your nursing times, so now I no longer get SO uncomfortable at night right before I get to bed.
I love having a 7-month-old. They are so much fun, and expressive, and playful, and AWESOME. Sometimes I wish he wasn't so clingy, but the nice thing is that since he has an older sister and two cats, there are bunch of other people around to entertain him. I just can't leave him in the same room as Carmen for a long time, because eventually she leaves and he gets lonely and upset. He can craw, but he hasn't yet figured out how to switch ROOMS. He'll just beeline towards a toy and stuff it in his mouth.
Well, it's either a toy or it's cat food. NOM NOM NOM.
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