First Food Woes

Our first solid food meal was a lot of fun. Aurelia was excited about it. Smiling the whole time and eager to play with and use the spoon. The whole experience left us quite pleased . . . until a few hours after. I figured there would be some digestion issues as her body adjusts to new and thicker food. We chose an organic brown rice cereal. Across the board the suggestion was cereal as a first food, as it is supposed to be easy on the tummy and accepted better because it doesn't have a strong flavor. I was hesitant, and I think I should have gone with my instincts on this one.
By the afternoon we could tell she was getting uncomfortable and our normally happy baby was getting fussy. By that night she was so gassy that she woke up several times in just the first few hours after bed time with the most heartbreaking screams of pain. Around nine she woke up again and was inconsolable. Finally, after trying a tummy massage, moving her legs, warm wash clothes, I stripped her down, filled the tub with warm water, and hopped in the bath with her. She calmed down really quickly but she was so tired by that point that she just laid there limp in my arms. Once she started feeling better and realized there was water to be splashed, she perked up and had a little fun. She slept, restlessly, but still slept, until her usual waking time after that. I wish that was the end of it though. She was pretty gassy and uncomfortable for the whole next day and night and is just now starting to feel back to normal.
I started poking around on the internet and found so many people with the same story. Apparently rice cereal is not so easy to digest. The brand we had picked up had some additives and was fortified with iron (infant cereals usually are. That is the main purpose for beginning solids at 6 months. A babies iron stores usually run out by then). I had thought that maybe it wouldn't be as binding being mixed with a lot of breastmilk, but that wasn't the case, i guess. In the process, though, I found a few really good websites for making your own food purees.
So. . . I think we'll wait another week. She's got her 6 month vaccinations and doctor's appt on Saturday, so I am going to see what he thinks. My new plan: the one that kept trying to scratch it's way passed all the feeding advice I had been reading- Fruits and veggies first and I'll add grains a little later down the line. I can't imagine that she will have issues with iron if I give her a chance to try some good homemade greens and keep my own iron intake up.

P.S. When I was younger, I used to laugh at how parents constantly talked about their children's bowel movements. It seemed so absurd, and while it still feels the smallest bit absurd as I type all this, I have certainly come to realize how much that process communicates when the baby can't. It's really an excellent way to monitor the health of your child. I marvel at everything my baby girls achieves - even the smelly diapers!