It’s time to move on to the exploration phase of eating real food. Keep in mind that there are no rules for starting solid food. The goal of this month is for your baby to explore new tastes, textures, and smells. We are also Xi sitting in high chairs and familiar with bowls, bibs and spoons.
Don’t expect your baby to get a lot of calories from food in the first month or so. At this point, you just need to increase his or her normal milk intake with some food. That’s it. A normal intake of breast milk or formula should still provide the infant with most of the nutrients in the first year.
Milk/Formula Intake at 6 Months of Age
At 6 months of age, babies drink or drink an average of 24-32 ounces of milk or formula per day. Breastfed babies tend to drink less (up to 50%, in fact) than formula-fed babies, so don’t panic if your breastfed baby drinks much less water than a friend’s formula-fed baby; Breast milk is metabolized more efficiently and therefore requires less amount.
Start with Solid Foods
Your baby’s first taste of food should be a lot of fun. Take out your camera and record the moment.
Choose a date and time when your baby is resting well and you feel sane; The weekend is a great time to start so that everyone can be there, but again, it doesn’t matter. Do this whenever you feel motivated. Start about an hour or more after normal cow’s/formula feeding, so that he will be a little hungry but not so hungry that he eats his arm.
Guys, we’re just aiming for a few scoops, so lower your expectations. If he doesn’t like it at all, and you force him, I suggest you cancel the task and try again in a week. The last thing you want is for this to become a stressful endeavor.
For the first week or two, feed him once a day or so until you get into the Xi – it’s perfectly fine to feed him more often if you want to. (Starting to eat solid food is a process, not an event!)
Launch of New Food Products
The traditional way to start adding solid foods is to serve the same food (and only that food) for 3-4 days in a row before introducing a new one. The aim is to easily identify food allergies and sensitivities, but new research suggests that this approach is too conservative. Plus, these early foods don’t cause allergies in babies anyway.
However, studies have shown that babies learn to like new flavors more quickly when they are introduced in rapid succession. Think about a quick date, but with baby food. If one or more foods are rejected (because they will be denied!) This also allows you to provide more food. Bottom line: There’s no need to wait for a while before offering new food.
Repeated contact is important
As a general rule of thumb, babies will easily accept sweets such as fruits without any stimulation. On the other hand, some vegetables, especially bitter ones, require repeated exposure for the baby to accept. Sometimes, up to 10 times! This may seem unusual, but that’s actually how we evolved to understand what is safe food.
Here’s the thing: you feed him broccoli and he spits it out, you feed him broccoli and he spits it out … Rinse and repeat eight times until finally he says,”Broccoli, delicious!” Give me some more. Bingo, he’s now at the Broccoli Club. This is completely normal, so don’t give up! Most people don’t know this (after all, it’s not entirely intuitive), so they quit vegetables forever and fall into the trap of eating only starch and sweets.
Again, once babies enter early childhood, neophobias begin to emerge and they will become less and less keen to try new foods, so use the next 6-10 months to expand their palate as much as possible. The more foods your child is willing to eat (or try), the easier your life will be.
Starting solid: Le Menu
There are a few different ways you can get started: the cereal route, the baby food route, or the BLW (baby-led weaning) route.
Baby “Cereal”
Over the past 35 years or so, iron-fortified rice flour has actually become the recommended “number one food” for most American infants, primarily because it’s non-allergenic and easy to digest. Ask any older pediatrician, read any book about starting to add solid foods, ask most mums,”What food should my baby eat first?” The answer is inevitable:”Rice cereal, mixed with some breast milk or formula.” Nonsense. Unfortunately, it has become ingrained in our infant feeding culture.
Keep this in mind when considering baby cereal: there has been a lot of controversy about white cereal.
Here’s the thing: white rice cereal is neither rice nor grain; It is a cereal food. It is actually highly processed white rice flour with some vitamins and minerals added to it. White rice flour has an extremely high glycemic index. In fact, while cereals are still in the baby’s mouth, white rice flour begins to convert to glucose, and “cereals” are almost 100% glucose (sugar) by the time they are absorbed into the intestines. Although most baby cereals have added iron, iron is poorly absorbed. Only about 7% of the iron ingested is bound to red blood cells.
Pediatrician Dr. Alan Green Alan Greene, author of the book “Feeding Baby Green,” likens it to feeding your baby a spoonful of sugar.
Well, so what? Who doesn’t love sugar?
Keep in mind that the imprint of early tastes is very strong and can affect what babies receive in childhood and adulthood. Exposure to a food earlier in infancy (5 or 6 months) has a much stronger effect than exposure to a food at a later age (e.g.,10 months). By making rice cereal your child’s first meal (and then inevitably becoming a staple of the first-year diet, trust me), you may be setting the stage for high-glycemia, refined carbs to become a mainstay in your child’s diet. Diet.
Think about it: if all you ever had in your life was ice cream…… And then someone introduces you to broccoli, do you think that will work? At best, it’s going to be an uphill battle. While no one knows for sure whether using white rice cereal is the culprit of the obesity epidemic, logically, it may not help, especially if you have a family history of diabetes and/or obesity.
In short, if you really want to start with grains and eat solid foods, consider opting for whole-grain rice or even oatmeal.
Take Cereals
If you choose to start adding solid foods from baby cereal (any kind), you can simply mix the cereal with breast milk or formula in a small bowl and spoon feed it to get started. You may need to adjust the consistency and temperature to find the sweet spot. If you wish, don’t be surprised if the first few scoops are refunded. It takes a while for babies to Xi the concept of mouth use and swallowing non-liquids.
Baby Food Puree
Contrary to what most people think, you definitely don’t have to start your baby with cereal. Plain puree made from a single vegetable is an excellent first course mixed with your baby’s normal breast milk/formula.
For the first few weeks, I recommend introducing some or all of the following foods (again, just for the sake of simplicity; You can also feed them many other foods):
- Sweet potatoes or yams
- Ripe bananas
- squash
- pear
- avocado
- pea
Because they are as sweet (but not as sweet) as breast milk and formula, the success rate of these foods ^^ as first foods is very high. Once your baby thinks it’s cool to eat, we can quickly move on to some of the more challenging foods.
Starting Solid Food: Store-Bought Vs. Homemade
Yes, homemade food has many advantages over store-bought baby food. First of all, it’s much cheaper to make your own. In fact, you can make and freeze large quantities of food for very little money. Secondly, if you do it at home, you will have a clear idea of what is inside and what is not. You can also get creative and mix different flavors together for variety.
Having said all that, I would like to begin by acknowledging that the vast majority of moms will use at least some store-bought baby food, just for convenience.
If you are passionate about making your own food for your baby, then you should do it anyway. Making your own baby food is so fun and rewarding (and cheap!). However, if you don’t have the time, buy it in the market and don’t think twice. Either way, your baby will be happy.
Choose Commercial Baby Food
When buying baby food, avoid foods with added sugar and modified food starches, which are just empty calories. Organic food is always better if you can afford it. If you want to take a middle ground, simply buy the “dirty dozen” organic foods, which usually contain the highest levels of pesticides: celery, peaches, strawberries, apples, blueberries, nectarines, bell peppers, spinach, cherries, kale/kale, potatoes, and imported grapes. Oh, and you don’t have to worry too much about salt because it’s no longer added to commercial baby food.
Earth’s Best is a long-time beloved baby food brand, it is organic and widely available. At Safeway near my house, I can get 10 bottles for $9(that’s at Cost-ifornia, so hopefully yours is cheaper). Not too shabby.
Baby-LED Weaning
Again, having your baby eat on his own from the beginning (or once he has mastered picking up small objects) is another good option. I suggest you try at least some finger food and see how he reacts. Some babies will stare at the food on the tray and don’t know what to do with it, while others will start chewing on the path to happiness and never look back. Yes, BLW can make life easier!
In general, the same initial food ideas apply to BLW, although some of them are not practical because they are not easy to self-manage at this age. Ideally, you’ll want to cut your finger food into the shape of a matchstick so your baby has a handle to hold onto. Foods like broccoli are perfectly shaped because they can easily grasp the stems and eat the florets.
When it comes to making finger food for your baby, the steamer is your best friend. You can steam the food as much or as little as you want to achieve the desired softness. You can use a regular steamer (or steamer) on the stovetop, or you can use an electric steamer, just like this one.
About Iron
We know that about 80% of the iron stores in newborns accumulate in the third month of pregnancy, so preterm infants are at higher risk of iron deficiency. On the other hand, iron stores in full-term infants may begin to diminish sometime between 6 and 9 months – studies are conflicting.
So does your baby need to take iron after 6 months as is commonly believed? Ask 10 different doctors and you may get 10 different answers.
Some studies have shown that breastfed infants need iron supplementation, while others have shown that iron supplementation reduces the amount of iron absorbed from breast milk. Although the iron content in breast milk is not high, the iron in it is highly absorbable. As a result, some studies have shown that iron in breast milk is sufficient on its own. Theoretically, formula-fed infants can get a lot of iron from formula, albeit with a low absorption rate.
The Truth About Food Allergies
Food allergies are on the rise: The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (AAAAI) reports that 6% of children ages 0-2 have food allergies and 9% of children ages 3-5 have food allergies.
The vast majority of food allergies are triggered by one of the “Big Eight Foods”: milk, eggs, soybeans, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, and wheat (sesame seeds are the ninth…).
In the past, pediatricians and allergists would recommend waiting 1-3 years before introducing these foods to babies, but recent studies have shown that waiting to introduce these foods to babies has not been shown to have any effect in preventing these food allergies. In fact, the latest research and professional advice suggests the opposite: introducing the most common “allergies” early can reduce your child’s chances of developing food allergies. Go figure it out.
Yes, friends, the new evidence-based advice on starting to eat solid foods is that waiting for the introduction of allergenic foods is not only pointless, but can also be problematic. Plus, you’re missing out on some delicious foods for your baby.