Your Six-Month Old

     If your sanity survives the fussing, problems sleeping and worry of the first four months of life, then six months is your payoff. Six-month olds are always laughing and babbling and they can charm the socks off any adult. They look at everyone intently for a few seconds and then decide that you are either a “mom-thing” or a “dad-thing” and then give you a big smile.

     Six months of age is a time of transitions. Many doctors recommend not starting solid foods until four to six months of age, especially if there is a strong family history of allergy. But now is time to start if you haven’t already done so. You do not have to start one new food every three or seven or ten days to “see if he has allergies”. We develop allergic reactions only after we have been exposed to whatever protein we are going to be allergic to. In other words, you don’t have an allergic reaction to a food the first time you eat it. This is what makes diagnosing food allergy difficult – if your child develops hives, it could be from the carrots you started last week or the kumquats you started six weeks ago. It’s just not likely that it is from the squash you fed to him for the first time today.

     You also do not have to follow some other commonly heard rules about starting solids. It doesn’t matter if you start with cereal or what kind. It makes no difference if you feed yellow vegetables before green, fruit before vegetables, cereal before fruit or anything else. All humans prefer the taste of sweet because our tongues have a lot of sweet taste buds. Every two-year old prefers ice cream to broccoli, no matter what he was fed at six months of age. Starting your infant on vegetables before fruit is not going to change the anatomy of his tongue. It’s up to all of us to monitor the amount of sweets that our children eat in the first years of life.

     Six months of age is the time to start a gradual transition towards eating a variety of foods and having a “breakfast/lunch/dinner schedule by nine months of age. The best way to vary the kinds of food is to simply feed him what you are eating. Don’t worry about likes and dislikes because what he hates today, he’ll love tomorrow. Don’t worry if he doesn’t seem interested in solids at any given meal – at this age, he still is getting his primary nutrition from breast milk or formula. Don’t try to feed him if he doesn’t act hungry.

     Six months is the age when the pacifier needs to stay in the crib. Junior can have it at nap and night times, but not when he’s awake and up. He’ll never miss it – he’ll just put the next closest thing in his mouth. And by not giving it to him during the day, you will avoid all future pacifier problems.

     Six months can be a time for sleeping problems. Even an infant who has slept well may begin waking up. Six months is the time when your infant should be sleeping through the night without a feeding, but, if he is going through a growth spurt, he may start to need night feedings again even if he hasn’t needed them. If you are in the habit of rocking and holding your infant until he goes to sleep, six months is when that system falls apart. He is now alert enough to know he is being laid down and so, when you try, he wakes up and starts screaming again. You may have to decide between putting him in the crib awake and letting him cry himself to sleep or holding him all night long.