Chirky

Baby's First Rice Cereal

Ingredients:
1/4 cup whole grain brown rice
1 cup water

(Plus my addition: 2 oz pumped breastmilk or formula)

Instructions:
1. Pulverize rice into a powder (I used my blender for this - it took 4-5 minutes for a fine powder.)
2. Boil 1 cup water.
3. Add rice powder and turn heat to low.
4. Whisk constantly while cooking, 5-8 minutes, until water is fully absorbed.
5. Cool.
6. Mix .5 oz breastmilk into individual servings

(Makes four servings, which I divide into even smaller servings)

I divided the rice cereal into four smaller containers. Since one infant's "meal" is between two teaspoons and 1/4 cup, I kept one container in the fridge and froze the other three. Right now, I'm feeding Rayah a full meal of breastmilk, and afterward offering her the rice cereal, just to get her used to the idea of eating something from a bowl and spoon. We'll do this for two to four weeks.

The one container I kept in my refrigerator is the equivalent of three servings, once breastmilk is added. (It should be a mostly liquid texture. I'm adding breastmilk to each individual serving, not to the entire container of rice cereal. Since breastmilk is a natural source of iron, I'm not concerned about adding extra iron right now.)

Since food is something I enjoy cooking (and eating!) so much, I'm really excited to expand Rayah's palette of tastes: pears, butternut squash, apricots, peas. It's so, so much fun!! I thought I might cry feeding her solids -- you know: Mah bebe is growing up! and all that -- but instead I was just really proud of her. We even got a quick video of her foray into solid foods!