I feel like I'm doing this all wrong. Last week I started feeding my 4 1/2 month old cereal. She didn't seem to enjoy it but she didn't outright hate it, and she seemed more satisfied. This week she is rejecting the cereal, turning her head away and spitting it out, BUT when it is dinnertime she sits in her exersaucer smacking her lips, fussing, and crying while we eat. I don't know what to do.

Sounds like you have a tough dilemma there. It could be that the cereal is too thick or thin. I know my daughter would spit a lot of the cereal out, we just kept trying. It's hard for them when they first start and it just takes time.

SOmetimes babies want to mimic the action you are doing. It may be messy, but have you tried giving her a little cereal on a bowl where she can "play" with it and see if she starts eating her cereal that way? (I personally didn't do this - don't think I could have put u pwiththe mess, however a friend tried it and it worked. She was also able to fairly quickly get her daughter to understand it was eating time and not play time.)

Okay, I'm certainly not a doctor, but have you ever tasted that stuff yourself? It tastes like paste. It's rice or oat cereal for goodness sake. Alex didn't mind it at first while getting the hang of eating off the spoon, but shortly thereafter he wanted something with some flavor to it. Gerber makes the cereals now with banana flavoring, and/or I used to mix a little bit of applesauce with it and he loved it. He just wanted something that tasted good after a while!

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Tigriz
Mom to Alex - 1/21/06

I tried it very thinly in the bottle for a while. Then I made it really soupy and fed her the best I could. I would not mix anything with it yet. I would try to get her to drink it in her bottle.

Trying the flavored cereals is a good idea... someone said the stuff
tastes horrible and that is *so* true. Also, have you asked the
pediatrician about waiting a little longer? Some suggest waiting until
6 months to start the solids although I surely didn't wait that long.

My children would never eat the cereal off the spoon. I did put some in the bottles like bailey said - even though it is not recommended.
Babies spitting out cereal does not necessarily have to do with the taste, but the new texture or just not getting the hang of eating semi-solids yet.

Yes, it is definitely not recommended to try the cereal in bottles, so I don't know if I would do that. It takes patience to get them to learn to eat from a spoon, so hang in there. As for adding stuff to the cereal, I never did that, as I wanted to keep my daughter away from sweet tasting stuff as long aspossible, so she wouldn't develop a preference for it. However, every baby and every situation is different, so you just need to do what feels right for you.

I have not tried cereal yet. I am trying to breastfeed exclusively for the first six months. That being said, I went on a date with my husband last night and had some wine so was feeding my daughter pumpped milk when we got home. She took 8.5 ounces of milk in the two hours before bed. I'm not sure how long MY body will be able to keep up with that and may have to supplement a little at bedtime.

Caroline won't take a bottle. She refuses it. One of my friends told me to try mixing the cereal with applejuice, or just go straight to jarred baby food. What do you guys think?