Advice from the 1930s

Hi Abbie!

Thanks for the great post! Many of the things you brought up, especially the idea of sharing a family meal, really resonated with me. It's hard to sort through all of the disparate information out there about first foods, and I feel like it sets up new parents for at least a confusing (if not downright stressful) start to what should be an exciting journey of taste exploration. It seems like our society, with good intentions, has conditioned us to tiptoe around many aspects of child-bearing and rearing, with food introduction being no exception. We're made to feel that as "non experts," we need to rely on "expert" advice and push our own instincts aside.

A book on child-rearing from an old family collection, Infants and Children: Their Feeding and Growth by Frederic H. Bartlett, M.D., (NY: 1932), brought this concept into sharp focus for me earlier this week. The whole thing is a treasure and a hoot, with passages like, "I think everyone will agree that babies and children should never be kissed on the mouth." (p.209), and "The training for a regular bowel movement may begin at a very early age, often in the second or third month...If you can, start training your infant to have a bowel movement in the chamber each morning, at the age of 1 month...It is unnecessary to say that if you can establish this habit during infancy and childhood so that it can be carried on by the child when he gets older, it will be one of the greatest boons of his life." (p. 231 & 234). !! Like they won't learn to poop otherwise?!

But, I digress... I meant to share the advice about early foods offered by this book, just for some interesting comparisons with other information we can scrounge up. One thing that made a big impression was the overwhelming amount of advice about precisely how and when to feed a baby at every age. Schedules, including the omission of nightly feedings (I should say "the 2AM feeding") starting at 2 weeks (!), and detailed cooking instructions are outlined to an extent that I haven't seen in current advice tomes. (Maybe we have actually simplified as a society since then!) In the interest of space, I will keep to the basics for this post.

From the chapter titled "Food in Addition to Breast or Bottle":

"At 2 weeks of age, you will begin to give you baby cod liver oil.
At 1 month, orange juice.
At 3 months, cereal.
At 4 months, egg yolk.
At 5 months, vegetables.
At 6 months, stewed fruit.
As a matter of fact, you could give any of these foods at 1 month of age, if small enough quantities were used to start with, but that is more stunt feeding than it is advisable feeding." (p. 47).

The cereals recommended are oatmeal and cornmeal. The egg preparation is to boil for 15 minutes and remove the white. The vegetables listed are spinach, cauliflower, tomatoes, carrots, turnips (yellow or white), broccoli, green peas, asparagus, string beans, squash (yellow or white), celery, onions, lettuce, cabbage, and beet tops. Prep for the veggies is to cook, put through a course strainer, and season with a little butter. Canned vegetables are fine, but "don't pour away the juice that comes with them in the can. Serve some of it with the vegetable as it contains nutritious salts." (p. 60). "Perhaps the safest fruits to start with are apples and prunes. These should be cooked as they would be for grown-ups, except that spices should not be used, and only as little sugar as possible." (p. 60).

I could go on and on, but my baby of 2009 needs his bath...

Enjoy!
Marjorie