baby cereal question

With my older daughter, we used formula, so it was easy to mix cereal with
her
milk (formula). I just tried to hand express some milk to mix with my
younger baby's cereal...it took me about 30 min. Are there any tricks of
the trade I should know?

Penny Gaines...

Best time to express is first thing in the morning, and the second best
is when baby is on the other side.

I've got vague recollections of using cow's milk: I know I definately
didn't use formula.

dragonlady...

I used to fill an 8 oz bottle in less than 10 minutes, hand expressing.
I think it was just a matter of getting used to it.

hemulen27...

I was always terrible at expressing, by hand or otherwise, so when I
started my little one on cereal, I bought little cartons of ready made
formula for this (although even the smallest carton was too big for
this purpose and I ended up throwing most of it away). In the end,
though, I gave up on using milk and actually used yoghurt to mix with
the cereal and she absolutely loved that. You can use natural but I
used fruity stuff and she wolfed it down.

Mary W....

I actually had a bunch of pumped milk arounnd (I WOH) and still didn't
use it for making cereal! We started DD2 on sweet potatoes and then
pears. After that I introduced oatmeal and mixed it with either the
potatoes or the pears. That worked great for her. For DD1, I mixed
it with water or juice. Rice cereal was very constipating for DD1,
so we went straight to the oatmeal with DD2.

Mary W.

Also - just as an aside, my dd didn't really like baby rice so I used
baby oatmeal instead; I don't know if that makes any difference.

Rev. Jack...

Yeah, move the old man out of the way.

Rev. Jack

My fish aren't very happy.
~~~~ }<((((x> ~~~~~~ }<{{{{x> ~~~~~~~ }<(((((x>

Ericka Kammerer...

It does get better with practice, but if you're not
pumping for any other reason, it may not be worth your while
to develop that expertise just for mixing cereal ;-)
Personally, I would question the need for mixing cereal with
milk of any sort. You could use water or juice. If
you're already introducing solids, and don't have any
other reason to think that formula would be a problem,
why not use formula? If a little formula would be
problematic, might it not be a bit too early for cereal?
And, of course, there's nothing magic about cereal as
a first food. You could use something else instead.
I think the big win of mixing cereal with
breastmilk while introducing solids is that it helps
make for a familiar taste. On the other hand, if you
wait until 6 months, the baby often doesn't need
much fussing to accept the cereal (or whatever other
food you introduce).

Best wishes,
Ericka

0tterbot...

yes - put juice or water in the cereal instead :-) what you're aiming to do
probably just isn't worth the effort if expressing is difficult and remains
so, & you don't need or want to do it for any reason but to put it in
cereal.
kylie