Natalie is now 6 months old, so I was ready to start giving her real food! Baby’s first meals have always been super exciting around here and it was no different for our youngest. :)

Of course she didn’t seem very excited about it, but that’s probably because she didn’t know what was coming!

She’s still not allowed to have anything orally until we figure out what is causing her swallowing / aspirating issues. But with no clear timeline on another swallow study or really anything to do about it, I wasn’t going to wait forever to introduce her to the magic that is food…!

Don’t worry though - she’s not getting anything in her mouth there, I just handed her the syringe for a photo and like everything she touches, it went straight in her mouth. Thankfully, she’s not figured out how to work the plunger on the syringe and I rescued it from her. ;)

First meal done!

It didn’t really matter what food we picked since she wasn’t going to taste it, but I went with the boy’s favorite at that age - sweet potatoes! I asked the dietician how much to give her since she can’t really control the volume of food she gets and I am always stressed out about giving her too much or too little. Her advice was to start with 2.5mls (for reference, a teaspoon is 5 mls!) and slowly work up from there.

Clearly she is not going to be getting much nutrition from her first “meals”, but we get to try a new food every few days and make sure she doesn’t have any food allergies. And somehow between now and a when she is a year old, we’ll get to make her meals by blending everything in he Vitamix. I’ve been researching all I can on “blended diets” since she will likely still be using a g-tube at that point, but I would not be the least bit upset if I was prepared and she didn’t need it. ;)