When, what, and how to feed a baby

New studies have come out recently showing that the introduction of solid food both too early and too late seems to be linked with increased likelihood of later developing diabetes.  My mad auntie-in-law recently shared this study with me from her ScienceDaily feed, originally published in a well-regarded peer-reviewed journal, so I trust its contents pretty well.

From the new evidence, it appears that the sweet spot lies somewhere in the 4-6 month range, depending on the child's readiness.  What's "readiness" mean?  The usual signs are that the child has ceased tongue-thrusting and is reaching for your food.  

This study contradicts current official recommendations to breastfeed exclusively for the first 6 months, introducing not even solid foods until then.  But it seems that if you introduce solid foods much later than that, you're likely to increase risk for diabetes.  Generally speaking, when diabetes risk is high, so are other inflammatory diseases like coronary heart disease and hypertension.  

OK, enough of the sciency-talk.  So, what did we do with Calvin?  He was 5 months old when he lunged forward and grabbed the banana out of my cereal bowl.  So that's when we started letting him play around with solids.  We didn't do formal "meals" with him until he was closer to 7 months, and we sort of followed the principles of baby-led weaning.  Rather than letting him lunge for anything and everything, we followed the recommended schedule for food introduction because of possible food sensitivities, but we also pretty much skipped purees with him.  Sure, we steamed food and chopped stuff up nice and small, but he only condescended to be fed by others for about three weeks.  He wanted to hold things himself!  And eating went a lot smoother when I put him in charge of it.  

According to Ellyn Satter, author of Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense, it's important to let your child make as many decisions about eating as plausible.  She writes that the best thing to do is to put the food on the table and let your kid decide how much, if anything, they'll eat.  Meals were messy battle-grounds until I truly followed that advice.