Katie Ferraro (0s):

So when it comes to feeding your baby oatmeal, there's a wide variety of choices for you. You can do quick cooking oats. You can do old fashioned oats. You can do steel-cut. You're welcome to buy the baby oats. If you want to, it does have extra iron, but you don't need to because regular oatmeal has iron. Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, Registered Dietitian, college nutrition professor, and mama of seven specializing in baby led weaning. Here on the Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy podcast I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the competence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (44s):

All right, guys are you ready to talk about oatmeal? That's right. A whole episode dedicated oatmeal. You're probably like this is the weirdest podcast ever, who has a whole episode talking about oatmeal, but there's a method to my madness. And it's because every week I teach a free online workshop called baby led weaning for beginners, and there's a Q and a at the end. And I get the same types of questions over and over. And obviously there's a lot of questions about gagging and joking and allergenic foods, but oatmeal is way up there. Like it's probably in the top 20, as far as questions that I get. So I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into some of the specific questions that I know you guys are wondering about when it comes to feeding your baby oatmeal. So that's the rationale behind this episode, which is entitled aptly enough, oatmeal, how to feed this food safely to your baby.

Katie Ferraro (1m 30s):

If you haven't taken my baby led weaning for beginners workshop yet I'd love to have you on it. I teach it a number of times each week. It's all about how to feed your baby 100 different foods before turning one, without you having to spoonfeed periods or buy pouches. Everyone on the free workshop gets a copy of my hundred first foods list. You can sign up for this week's workshop times. If you go to the show notes for this page, which is B L w podcast.com/four seven, all the info from today's episode, everything you ever wanted to know about feeding your baby oatmeal. Plus the link to sign up for the baby led weaning for beginners free online workshop. Again, that's on the show notes for this episode, which is B L w podcasts.com forward slash four seven.

Katie Ferraro (2m 13s):

So let's dive in, we're learning all about oatmeal today. All right, so let's get busy talking a little bit about oatmeal. And I think one of the reasons why parents and caregivers ask specific questions about how to feed their baby oatmeal is sometimes they're surprised. Gosh, here's a person teaching about baby led weaning, which generally bypasses the steps of traditional spoon-feeding, which include iron-fortified rice cereals. Now I have nothing against iron-fortified rice cereals. I think they're very valuable in certain situations, but they're certainly not the only foods that babies can eat. I do advocate for feeding your baby pureed type foods, but that's allowing your baby to feed them. If you're doing baby led weaning, if you're just getting started and you're like, whoa, wait a minute.

Katie Ferraro (2m 54s):

She's talking about incorporating purees, but this is baby led weaning, go back and listen to episode number five. It's called how to do my purees for a few days approach when starting solid foods with baby led weaning again, that's episode number five, and that'll kind of set the stage for you about why purees are important for babies, but we want the baby to be able to self feed that food. So let's take oatmeal, which is a fabulous food that I think even most food cultures around the world have some sort of equivalent of a hot grain cereal, akin to oatmeal. Now, when it comes to temperature, we never want to serve temperature or heat, hot foods to babies. It's better that they be room temperature, slightly warm.

Katie Ferraro (3m 34s):

We can do chilled cold foods, but for oatmeal, we generally eat it a little bit on the warmer side right now. The questions that I get from parents are when is it safe to feed my baby oatmeal? Now babies are safe to start solid foods. When they're six months of age or six months adjusted age, if your baby is premature plus exhibiting the other signs of readiness to feed, if you're not sure what those are. One of the earlier episodes, which was episode two, was all about five things your baby should be able to do before starting solid foods. That's a good one to listen to. If you're like, I don't even know if my baby is ready to start solid foods, but once you're sure your baby is ready to start solid foods, oatmeal is a great first food or one of the first foods that you can feed.

Katie Ferraro (4m 14s):

Now you can preload a baby's food and hand it to your baby and teach your baby how to sell feed. Even from their very first bites. We want to avoid taking the spoon and putting the oatmeal directly in the baby's mouth. So you can do this food as early as six months of age. Sometimes you'll hear people mistakenly say things like, well, I've heard that babies can't digest grains, and that's definitely not true. The American academy of pediatrics reminds us that our baby's digestive tracks are ready and capable of digesting every type of nutrient that you could find in foods. Obviously we don't do alcohol. Okay? But all the other ones, the carbs and the proteins and the different phytochemicals that are in foods as early as three months of age, your baby's gut is developed enough to be able to digest those.

Katie Ferraro (4m 57s):

Now, of course we don't feed three month old babies, anything except breast milk or formula, because from a physiological standpoint, it's not safe for them to swallow plus nutritionally. They don't need it, but don't fear that your baby can't digest meat or can't digest grains. That's definitely not true. Oatmeal is a wonderful food for babies because it is a whole grain food. So carbohydrate foods are important and they should make up the majority of our baby's calories along with a lot of fat and a little bit of protein. I just recently did an episode on how to balance your baby's BLW plate. So if you're curious about like, oh, how do I combine these different foods? It's not complicated at all. Listen to episode number 45, if you want more detail on balancing that played out.

Katie Ferraro (5m 38s):

But I love carbohydrate foods for babies and oatmeal is a great one. So parents will then inevitably ask, all right, well, do I have to buy baby oatmeal? Now you guys don't have to do anything. And I'm a firm believer that you could bypass buying any specific quote, unquote baby foods with the baby led approach to feeding. If you want to. Now, some parents are like, I just want to buy the baby oatmeal. That's fine. You're welcome to but know that you don't have to. One thing I don't like about baby oatmeal is that it tends to cost significantly more, almost twice as much per serving as regular oatmeal. And I'm always interested in cost saving. I'm feeding a number of different ages of people in my family.

Katie Ferraro (6m 19s):

One of the benefits of baby led weaning is that babies can eat modified versions of the same foods, the rest of the family's eating. So I'm definitely not buying baby oatmeal for my bigger kids. I don't feel that I need to buy it for my babies, but you can. One thing that's nice about baby oatmeal. It has extra iron added to it, but please know that regular oatmeal like you or I as an adult would eat. That's also a whole grain that has a fairly decent amount of oatmeal. I'll talk about how it differs between the different types of oatmeal in a second. So there's nothing wrong with baby oatmeal, but you definitely don't have to buy it. You could save your money and serve your baby regular oatmeal like you eat. So let's talk about that. What kind of oatmeal then if we're talking about, you know, adult oatmeal, can a baby eat well when that you want to stay away from are the instant packets of oatmeal.

Katie Ferraro (7m 5s):

So remember those probably when you were a kid, you opened the box and you take out six or eight packets. You tear it open, pour one in the bowl, pour milk or water on it, put it in the microwave. The reason why those tastes so amazing you guys is because they generally have a lot of added sugar. We want to stay away from added sugars for babies. But the base of that, the actual oatmeal that's in there. That's a great food for babies. Now, when you're choosing oatmeal, there's a variety of different types and people are partial to one or the other. I know personally, I like quick cooking oats. They've been parboiled. The starch has been gelatinized so they cook a little bit faster. I'm always running late in the morning. So anything that saves me a few minutes is great. I do the Quaker ones. I know that this is not sponsored by any means.

Katie Ferraro (7m 46s):

I just mentioned it because I shop at Costco and that's what they have at Costco. Some families say I don't like the Costco ones, cause they're not organic. You do what works for you, but know that you can do quick cooking. You can do old-fashioned. You also can do steel cut oats. Now, if you look at a quarter cup serving of quick cooking or old fashioned oats, like the ones that would come out of, let's say the Quaker oats canister compared to a quarter cup of steel cut oats. There's about twice as much iron in steel cut, as you would get in quick cooking notes. So in a quarter cup of quick cooking notes, there's about close to one milligram of iron, but you get closer to two milligrams of iron in a quarter cup of steel cut. But of course, steel cut because it's cut so small. It's like little, little tiny granules.

Katie Ferraro (8m 27s):

It's a lot more compact. So there's actually a greater weight in a quarter of a cup measurement as compared to the flaky oats. Again, kind of splitting hairs here. Please know that oatmeal, as it stands is a decent source of iron for your baby. You could go and get the baby oatmeal, which has a lot more iron added to it, but you certainly don't need to. I recommend looking to get your iron from a variety of different sources, including whole grains like oatmeal. So you can do old fashioned. You can do quick cooking. You can do steel. Cut the steel cut. Take a little bit longer. If I remember, I like to do mine in the slow cooker overnight making overnight oats with the steel cut oats. I think it has a really nice rich flavor. And you could mix that up for your baby too.

Katie Ferraro (9m 8s):

If you want to. The next question that parents always ask is, well then how do I cook the oatmeal? Like what do you mix with it? I do a lot of quick cooking and old fashion. So I do a two to one ratio of fluid to oats. So I usually cook with milk. It's perfectly fine to cook with milk. Sometimes parents hear whoa, you're feeding a baby. They can have cow's milk before one. Yes they can. You can use cow's milk as an ingredient in foods that you're cooking for your baby, like baked goods, or if you're making oatmeal, you're making soup. Try to use whole milk if you can, because your baby needs that fat from the milk product there, we don't generally do reduced fat or low fat milk products until after the baby is one, but it's fine to cook with that milk. If you want to generally don't do two new foods at the same time.

Katie Ferraro (9m 51s):

So if your baby has not been previously introduced to milk protein, I wouldn't do oatmeal is a new food and milk has a new food. It's very unlikely that your baby would be allergic to oats. It's a very low risk food, but it's always a good idea to do one new food at that time. And you could do one new low risk food per day, but we do wait a few days in between introducing the allergenic foods. So I have a whole episode all about how to introduce milk protein to your baby. With more info about the difference between fluid cows milk for babies versus yogurt or using it as an ingredient. If you want to check out that episode, you can go to the BLW podcast.com forward slash one three. Episode 13 is all about milk protein, but back to the milk, you can cook your baby's oatmeal with formula.

Katie Ferraro (10m 33s):

If you want to, or with breast milk, if you want to, if you have that much extra breast milk, my hat is off to you, but some parents do and they like to cook with it. And that's a great way to add some additional nutrition milk. The cows milk by itself doesn't have any iron in it, but infant formula and breast milk would have some iron in it, but you don't have to do that. If you don't want to. You're welcome to cook with regular milk, or you can also cook with water if you want to. I think it tastes a little bit bland. I like to add something else to flavor it. But another unique thing about oatmeal is that once your baby's had it a few times with no reaction, you're confident in their ability to handle that texture. You can start using oatmeal as the base with which you introduce other new foods. So one that I like to do a lot is pumpkin oatmeal year round, not even just in the fall.

Katie Ferraro (11m 17s):

I love canned pumpkin as a way to introduce your baby to a really unique flavor. It's a high vitamin a food. It's got some fiber in there. So what I'll do is that two to one ratio, two parts fluid to one part oatmeal. I'll do half of the fluid, the canned pumpkin. Now with the canned pumpkin, be sure you're doing just the canned pureed pumpkin and not pumpkin pie mix. Pumpkin pie mix has a lot of added sugar in it. They look kind of similar, but if you're introducing your baby to pumpkin, one way you can do it is take half the fluid. So make it half water and half pumpkin or half milk can have pumpkin or half formula and half pumpkin or half breastmilk and have pumpkin and do two parts of that to one part oats. And you can make extra, it's kind of annoying to make a quarter of a cup of a serving of oatmeal.

Katie Ferraro (11m 59s):

I don't know, maybe you're into that, but I always prefer to make more and then freeze it or refrigerate it and save it until later you can mix other new foods into it as well. So if you're trying peanut butter, for example, you might know that gobs of peanut butter and Intacct peanuts are choking hazards for babies, but you could send that peanut butter out in oatmeal. We want to make it as least sticky as possible because sticky foods that could adhere to the roof of the baby's mouth could pose a choking hazard, but you can use oatmeal. I hope you're seeing there as kind of a medium to introduce other new foods. So there you have it. That's kind of the basics about oatmeal. It's a really great food to feed your baby. It's whole grain. It's got iron in it. You can make it how the rest of your family makes it just be sure to refrain from adding sugar or adding salt for the portion that you serve your baby.

Katie Ferraro (12m 46s):

You can always go back and add your own sugar and your own salt. And we also want to stay away from raisins as well. I know a lot of, a lot of you guys like raisins in your oatmeal, but we don't do any dried or sticky fruits for babies until they're after one year old. So if you're just starting solids at six or seven months of age, hold off on the dried fruit, but you're welcome to do cinnamon, or you can add nutmeg or whatever else you add to oatmeal. I know my friend and colleague Jenna Helwig, who writes a lot of baby led weaning cookbooks. She likes to do overnight oats and oatmeal with olive oil in it as a way to kind of add a savory flavor. And she sometimes add some more savory ingredients. If you guys are on Instagram, be sure to check Jenna out.

Katie Ferraro (13m 28s):

She's at real baby food. And she's also got some great other cookbooks for baby led, weaning all about using your slow cooker. And even if you don't have one, she has other great ideas for offering your baby that wide variety of foods and flavors and tastes and textures. So again, if you want to check out any of the resources mentioned in today's episode, I'll go ahead to link actually to some of Jenna's content in the show notes for this episode, that's at BLWpodcast.com forward slash four seven. And I'll also have a link there where you can sign up for my free baby led weaning workshop. If you want to grab my hundred first foods list and start really pushing your baby's palette towards trying all of these new foods that we know will help you raise an independent eater and prevent picky, eating and oatmeal plays a role in that who knew Bye now!