Between four and six months, most babies start to take solid food. You can usually tell when to phase it in: they become extremely hungry. Nutritionally, breast milk just ain't enough any more. (Psychologically, is another matter. Some babies go on guzzling at the breast until they are two years old. They just like being there. Who wouldn't?)
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| How To Feed A Baby Solid Food For The First Time |
And so gloop comes into your life, You can buy ready-made gloop from supermarkets. You can make your own. In our flat babies always knew that breakfast or lunch was on its way by the sound of a whirring food processor down in the kitchen. My girlfriend, who has strong views about organic food, believes that shop-bought gloop is an instrument of the devil, for she has sadly missed her calling as a rabble-rousing demagogue.
But wherever the gloop comes from, it's still gloop, because that's all babies can digest at this stage. And all gloop has one significant characteristic: it gets everywhere. No wall is safe from gloop. Few ceilings are immune. That isn't birdshit on your shoulder. And that isn't wax clogging up your ear.
Gloop falls into two categories: sweet gloop and savoury gloop. Baby will love sweet gloop. Mother will want to feed baby savoury gloop because she says it is better for baby. Baby will turn its nose up. Baby will refuse the spoon. Baby will cry.
Mother will say, that's what I have prepared and that's all there is. Baby will cry some more. Mother will say you're not getting round me like that. Baby will turn up the volume. Grains of plaster will fall from the ceiling. Mother will say 'Fuck it' and latch baby onto her bosom in high dudgeon. Baby will guzzle loudly in celebration of its victory. Father will slope off to the kitchen and gloomily start mashing up a banana.
Because baby has a point. The first gloop it will encounter, which is usually just baby rice (a powdered substance of unknown provenance) and fruit pulp mashed up, does taste absolutely disgusting. Many of us have fond memories of those little Heinz baby food tins, some of which passed muster as pudding when you were as old as six or seven. (I remember one in particular called Apples, Prunes & Custard, which to my yobbish palate was close to sublime. In my imagination I can taste it now.) But these are for children who can process the added sugar and salt that makes grown-up food even vaguely palatable. Babies must eat more carefully. They must eat gloop.
And for a few meals, upon which a heavenly light shines, they will do just that. You put the spoon in the gloop, baby opens its mouth, you put the spoon in the mouth. Hey, this is easy, you think. But baby learns fast. A six-month-old can reach out for objects with its fingers, can bang the table and can shove finger foods into its mouth with moderate success. Baby looks at the spoon. Baby thinks, I can do that, Baby grabs the spoon from you. Gloop goes everywhere.
This is the first battle you will fight at mealtimes - the first of maybe 5,782. Baby will want to feed itself, will seek Power Over The Spoon. Baby will soon discover that a spoon can be bashed on the table, not just once but thousands of times, and that gloop can be splashed about in millions of amusing ways. After a while you run out of patience, give up on the meal - because nothing is being eaten - and go and do something else. Half an hour later baby will remember that it's hungry and start wailing again.
Children's tastes in food are unpredictable and constantly mutating. Some children like everything; most don't. I must confess for the record that I was an outstandingly fussy eater as a child. I just didn't like most foods. Without peanut butter and baked beans (and the occasional tin of Apples, Prunes & Custard) I might well have starved. My father was convinced I was doing this purely to annoy him, which shows how self-centred he was. We waged our Brussels Sprout Wars for 15 years before he admitted defeat and ran off with the au pair. I like lots of foods now. (But still not Brussels sprouts.) To find out more, you can check out How To Feed A Baby Solid Food For The First Time.