Pasta

[Athena]

Hi all

We are just starting out with BLW have done cucumber, avocado and fruit so far. My LO will be 6 months next week.

When is it ok to give pasta, like fusilli with a homemade tom sauce?

Something about pasta makes me uneasy, in your experience do they manage it ok?

Also, can I give something like Cheerios at breakfast time? Will she choke on these?

My first two were TW so I really have no clue what I'm doing.

TIA

 

[MindUtopia]

I think the general belief is that wheat is fine from 6 months, but best avoided before. We did pasta from shortly after 6 months. I found that bigger tube shaped pastas are best. Tesco does a giant penne pasta in their Tesco Finest range. It's expensive compared to the normal stuff, but it's the perfect size. I found putting it in sauce at first made it too slippery so we just did plain for awhile, but now it's easy to pick up even in sauce.

You might find at first that cheerios are too small until the pincer grip gets a bit better. We only really started with cheerios at about 9 months. But there's no harm trying. I might think about getting the baby cereal o's at first because they dissolve in the mouth and don't require chewing so less of a choking risk (not that it's easy to choke on cheerios anyway because there's a big hole in the middle, but you get what I'm saying). I think Ella's kitchen does one. What we really found worked well though was just weetabix soaked in a tiny bit of milk just to soften and then broken in half so she could pick up little chunks of it. Other people have recommended shredded wheat too, though I've not tried it.

 

[Athena]

Brilliant advise thanks!

 

[HKateH]

Over cook the pasta slightly so that it's easier to mush between gums! Cheese makes it stickier and a bit easier to grab. Rigatoni is a decent fist sized shape and fusilli is pretty good too. I found that the best is like artisan pasta from Italian shops - you can get some quite large shapes which are easy to hold and as LO only eats a few pieces per meal, it doesn't work out too expensive.

We started plain and with a little cheese, then with a cream cheese sauce. Tomato sauce is very messy so I'd only give it as LO gets more confident with eating! My LO loves pasta bolognaise - I freeze pots of the sauce and meat before I add salt (to ours) and then cook it with pasta. You don't need much sauce or meat.

 

[summer rain]

I give the regular ocado penne and it's a perfect size for him I either give it with no sauce or a tiny amount say half a teaspoon of home made sauce stirred in, so far he has had no problem and has managed to bite off and chew respectable amounts from the pasta he is holding he does have two teeth though and a strong grip xx

 

[Athena]

Thanks ladies. I'm going to try some pasta this week