When your baby is ready for solid foods, sorting out the what, when, and how can feel daunting. If you’re feeling anxious about something as natural as eating, you’re not alone! It is a significant milestone to wean your baby from their liquid-only diet. In this short guide, we’ll cover methods, safety, and tips to arm you with confidence.
Reminder on readiness
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends introducing solids around six months of age, when babies sit up unassisted, show interest in food, and coordinate hand-to-mouth movements.
How you feed your baby will likely fall into one of three popular methods. Here’s a look at what these terms refer to.
A look at feeding methods
Baby-led Weaning:Involves offering finger foods from the start. Parents skip purees and offer safe variations of what the whole family eats.
Purees:Parents who choose a puree-first approach will often skip finger foods and specifically focus on finely mashed or pureed ingredients first.
Baby-led Feeding:This refers to an approach where parents offer both finger foods and purees from the start. The emphasis is more on following the baby’s hunger and full cues than whether or not the food is mashed or whole.
Is one method better than the other?
Following your baby’s hunger cues, whether it’s pureed or not, is ideal. This would be opposed to taking a spoonful of food and trying to push it into baby’s mouth. It doesn’t mean you can’t use a spoon, but you would load the spoon and wait for your baby to grasp it, bringing it to their mouth. Your job is to prepare and offer food, but your baby should always be the one who chooses what to eat and how much to eat.
Finger foods and purees are both great starting points
Starting solids is a sensory experience, and both pureed food and finger food can expose your baby to new textures, smells, and tastes.
However, if you start with purees only, it is important to view this as a brief transitional step towards introducing solids. Moving into more challenging textures, when baby is around 9 months old, is valuable and builds fine motor and chewing skills. Most babies are ready for various textures at six months old, so overly restricting finger foods from the start may be unnecessary.
If starting with finger foods causes undue stress, there may be better approaches. Your anxiety, no matter how well you hide it, can be felt by your baby and may impact their confidence in exploring their first foods. For those who need more time to jump into the solids, starting with purees and easing into more challenging textures is an ideal compromise between methods.
FAQ :
Do I have to start with rice cereal?
No! Start with any nutritious food that is easy for your baby to self-feed. It can help to source foods packed with iron because babies tend to lose iron by this age.
Should baby’s first foods be bland?
While avoiding excessive salt and sugar is crucial, incorporating spices can help develop their palate. Go for the flavor!
How should I prepare their first finger foods?
It might seem counterintuitive, but think oversized before bite size (soft, not hard). Before nine months old, babies can better manage oversized foods because of their whole-hand grasping abilities. Around nine months, they’ll have refined coordination and pincer grasp skills that make it suitable to pick up and manage those tinier, chopped portions.
How often should they be eating solids?
Inclusion in one meal per day is great starting out! Most babies aren’t ready for three meal offerings until closer to 9-10 months. Continue feeding breast or bottle as their primary source of nutrition first, offering solids in a complementary manner under the age of one.
What if my baby doesn’t eat what I offer?
Honor the sensory component: Touching, smelling, tasting, and licking all count as a win! It’s normal and okay if your baby doesn’t actually eat all of the food. Stay neutral, and keep portions small so that you minimize food waste.
Do I have to start with single ingredients?
You can, but it’s not a hard-fast rule. It’s common advice to offer baby one ingredient for several days in a row, monitoring for any reactions so that it is easier to identify potential food sensitivities or allergies. However, it is not harmful to start with multiple ingredients at once. Talk to your pediatrician for the most individualized advice regarding your baby’s risk for allergies.
Are there any foods that should be specifically avoided under one?
Honey
Juice
Cow’s milk
Unpasteurized items
Foods high in salt
Foods with added sugar
Fish high in mercury
When is it safe to try common allergens, like peanut butter?
Current research indicates that avoiding allergens is harmful, and early introduction can prevent food allergies. So, allergens can be introduced whenever your baby is now eating solids.
Major safety considerations
Choking hazards tend to be small, round, hard, and slippery foods, but as Solid Starts points out, “Food size safety varies with age, and even a couple of months can make a difference.” They have developed a visual free First Foods Database that shows texture safety by age.
Gagging vs. choking
It can be startling to see your baby gagging, but this is the body’s way of getting the food back out. Some gagging is normal and expected to happen with both pureed and finger foods. Knowing the difference between gagging and choking is essential because if you intervene in their gagging, you could make things worse.
Gagging is noisy. Baby will be coughing, retching, or crying as the food makes its way out. Monitor closely but do not intervene. Putting your fingers in their mouth can cause the food to lodge further down.
Choking is silent. Baby will not be making noise and may appear panicked. You must be familiar with infant CPR to be prepared to intervene appropriately. Here’s a resource from the Red Cross on infant CPR.
Choking hazards to avoid:
Hot dogs, meat strips, sausage
Uncut round fruits, like grapes or blueberries
Popcorn
Chunks of meat or cheese
Dry fruit like raisins
Raw, hard produce like baby carrots or apples
Whole kernel corn
Chips or pretzels
Thick spreads of nut butters
Save this guide and refer to it as often as you need! Above all, start slow, follow your baby’s lead, and supervise for safety but not for meal completion. You’ve got this!