You have asked what first foods I gave to my own baby, and when I introduced oils and spices. Memories fade so quickly -- I had to go back and look at his baby journal (if you can even call it that!). I wish I had had the time and scrap-booking talent to produce a detailed archive of his infancy, but it is just a plain notebook with absentmindedly jotted down entries every month or so. It seems like he ate mostly avocado, spinach and sweet potatoes from age 6 to 8 months. Then I slowly introduced chopped up foods that we were eating, with the chili heat level dialed down. During his big teething time around 8 to 9 months, I gave him a chicken leg bone (with the sharp pin bone removed) that had some meat on it, and let him chomp away. You have to be careful, though, because sometimes he gnawed so hard he got the cartilage off. All of this is not to say that solid foods were a big part of his life. Up to about 9 months old, only ate them once or twice a day, and largely subsisted on nursing. It seems like your little one might switch over to a larger proportion of solids much more quickly -- he ate a quarter cup on his first go, after all!
I loved hearing about the first taste of food! It made me so sad that I can't be there to see your adorable little guy guzzling down some Delicata squash or prunes. The feeding of babies is something that EVERYONE wants to participate in -- having just passed Thanksgiving, I remembered back to my son's first holiday. He wasn't eating solids, but several people wanted to give him a taste of pumpkin pie or whipped cream. Even the more laid-back folks really wanted to watch, if not offer tastes. As a mom, it stressed me out to say no and I remember wishing that I could just feed my kid the way I wanted to feed him, privately. Now, as an honorary aunt to your son, I am really burning to watch you feed him a little taste of something and watch his reaction. I love him and you, and it is so interesting to observe first experiences! Now I have more sympathy for my Thanksgiving family.
This dilemma of public/private feeding can be hard to negotiate. My husband and I felt really strongly that we wanted some experiences to be ours and ours alone with our son (the birth, the first feeding, certain celebrations). Sometimes, I felt selfish excluding people in our lives, especially grandparents, but I also wasn't comfortable with an expectation that loving family members somehow get an all-access pass to every experience. I wanted to treasure these fleeting moments, not feel pressure as a hostess or walk the minefield of well-intentioned but sometimes unwelcome advice. How to balance all of this? I do want to honor the community that is helping to raise my child, and include them in the celebration of his growth.
Two ideas for a public celebration have emerged in my research, one from Sudan and one from India. My Sudanese colleague described how, on the occasion of the emergence of a first tooth, an infant's family brings a large dish of a special rice pudding to the local temple. Usually the mother or grandmother prepares the dish. So when a family at the mosque is eating or sharing rice pudding, the members of the community always ask who has cut their first teeth. There is no exact recipe, but it is usually rice simmered with milk, sugar, and raisins. Nuts and coconut are optional based on the family's taste. This seems like a sweet and easy way to involve the larger community in an important event in a baby's life.
Another idea is the Bengali tradition of annaprasan, the ritual first feeding of rice. Usually this occurs when a child is 6 months old, while sitting on a grandparents lap. I need to investigate further whether this is truly a first feeding of solids, or just a ritual "first feeding". I suspect the latter. This rite of passage has been on my research radar screen for a while -- and then just this past week, Jhumpa Lahiri wrote a small piece on the topic in the New Yorker (here's the link to the piece) There are myriad instructions out there on the web as to how the ritual is performed, and what recipe to use for the rice. One of my favorite discussion threads (here's the link), states that part of the tradition is to offer the child different objects, representing future endeavors (i.e. if he touches the pen, he will be a poet). This ritual is the part of a larger cultural and religious practice, and certainly I am not proposing that we all adopt this tradition wholesale. But the idea behind it is charming, and gives an organized way for the larger community to observe a baby's milestone. I know I would have loved to participate in your son's annaprasan, or some version thereof.
Love, Abbie
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