
It's hard to believe, but the old fashioned idea of putting rice cereal in a small baby's bottle to make baby sleep longer at night, is still alive and well!! This is absolutely not recommended anymore. We now know that introducing babies to solids too young, can lead to food allergies. Their stomachs are simply not matured enough to digest anything other than breast milk or formula. Also, rice cereal provides additional empty calories which increases body mass (fat), but not skeletal mass. Therefore babies on unneeded rice cereal sometimes have a disproportion between weight and length percentiles. Ask your pediatrician when it's time to start feeding solids. I know this varies greatly, but I have not heard a pediatrician say before 4 months in many years, the norm seems to be 6 months these days. The only time cereal should be added to a baby's bottle, is if a baby has reflux. It will weigh down the milk, hopefully making it too heavy to come back up. This should only ever be done under the direction of your pediatrician or other specialist, however.