How to Add Rice Cereal to Infant Formula

Your baby is ready to try "solid" food! While an infant's primary source of nutrition should be breast milk or formula for the first 12 months, around 6 months of age most health care providers suggest trying to add some type of "solid" food to your baby's diet. Typically this means starting with adding formula or breast milk to rice, barley or oat cereal...continues below

Keywords

• Follow
• all
• guidelines
• on
• formula
• and
• rice
• cereal
• preparations.
• These
• guidelines
• were
• designed
• to
• provide
• baby
• with
• optimal
• nutrition
• and
• safety.
• Altering
• the
• preparations
• can
• put
• your
• baby
• at
• risk
• for
• not
• getting
• enough
• calories.

Skill

• 2

Warnings

• Do not ever add rice cereal to infant formula in a bottle unless directed to do so by your physician for specific medical diagnosis. Scientists at the Cleveland Clinic determined that this does not help baby sleep through the night. Adding cereal to formula in a bottle can also delay the infant from eating the "solid" food off of a spoon and more dangerously can cause babies to choke and increase the risk of aspiration (sucking the formula and rice cereal into the lungs while choking) which can lead to pneumonia. Additionally, physicians agree that adding cereal to a formula bottle likely interrupts the mechanism babies have that helps them eat only the calories they need by increasing the caloric load of the volume of food they drink. By adding cereal to your baby's bottle you may be teaching them to overeat and put them at risk for obesity later in life.
• Do not add anything other than breast milk or formula to rice cereal. As you move your baby through a range of solid foods you can increase the combinations you use. But until your baby is exposed to the proteins of each food you'll want to limit their exposure. Doing this will help you easily identify the cause of an allergic reaction.