Here you will find some information about weaning, for people who speak different languages. “Weaning” means when you start giving your baby food other than milk.
I can give you some tips based on how we cook here in Italy, but you can adapt them to your family’s preferences and cooking traditions.
If you want, you can translate this page with GOOGLE TRANSLATE in any language (but the translation might not be perfect). To translate, click on "Google translate” on the top right corner of the page, and choose your language.
BABIES 4 TO 6 MONTHS OLD: BEGINNING
You can start offering foods to your baby when they are around 4 and a half to 6 months old. At first, they will just taste the food, they will not eat a full meal.
We usually start offering them a snack with fruit, because it is quick, and easy to prepare: you can offer apple, pear, banana, plum, or any fruit you like (just leave strawberries and other berries last). You can use half a ready-made jar, or grate/mash fresh fruit yourself.
After tasting the fruit, you can offer your baby other foods to try: for instance, a few spoons of mashed vegetables, or a few spoons of a cereal cream, or a few spoons of a meat purée.
You can buy ready-made, commercial baby food at the store, or cook the food yourself.
Some babies are quick to learn, and after one week they are already willing to eat more, some babies take several weeks: everyone is different.
BABIES 5 TO 7 MONTHS OLD: TRYING A FULL MEAL
You can start cooking a full meal, to offer your baby for lunch.
When they've learned to eat their lunch, you can start cooking a full meal for dinner as well.
Go on reading to find out how to prepare a puréed baby meal, in the next chapters.
WHICH MILK CAN I USE?
If you don't breastfeed, you can use:
- FORMULA MILK "TYPE 1" from 0 to 6 months
- FORMULA MILK "TYPE 2" from 6 to 12 months
- COW MILK (whole milk) or "type 3" milk from 12 months
CAN BABIES DRINK WATER?
Yes, when babies start eating food, they can start to drink some water.
CAN BABIES DRINK TEA, CHAMOMILLE, OTHER BEVERAGES?
It is better not to offer sugary driks, such as iced tea, chamomile or commercial juices, because they contain too much sugar. You can make home-made fruit juices/smoothies with fresh fruit.
WHICH FOODS MUST be AVOIDED?
Babies can eat almost every food.
We only suggest that you offer them new foods GRADUALLY: not many new foods in the same day.
Babies CANNOT eat:
1) HONEY, until they are 12 months of age.
2) MUSHROOMS, until they are 2-3 years old.
3) added SUGAR or SALT, at least until 12 months of age, including sugary - sweets foods and drinks as we said above (cakes, chocolate, biscuits, puddings, commercial fruit juices, tea....)
HOW TO PREPARE A PUREED BABY MEAL for 5 to 7 months old babies:
In each meal- or almost each meal- we must offer all the nutrients:
Some vegetables and fruit:
Any of your liking
Some carbohydrates:
Cereals: such as rice, wheat, corn, pasta and bread. Potatoes.
Some proteins:
Meat, fish, cheese, legumes (beans, lentils...) or egg.
How to cook a baby meal for 5 to 7 months old:
1) Boil vegetables to make a vegetable broth and mash them to create a purée. You will need around 180 ml for 1 meal. You can cook larger quantities, and store them in the fridge for 24 hours, or in the freezer, for a few months.
2) Add 2-3 tablespoons of a cereal cream, you can buy it in the stores. For example rice cream, corn, tapioca, wheat cream, or multi cereal.
Alternatively, you can use around 20-25 gr of small pasta, or rice, cous cous, or other cereals.
3) Add a protein:
Meat or fish: 1/2 a commercial baby food jar, or 15-20 gr of fresh meat/fish that you cook yourself, and mince in very small pieces.
OR
Cheese: around 10-20 gr of creamy cheese.
OR
Legumes (beans, lentils, peas…): 10 gr of dry legumes, or 30 gr of fresh legumes.
OR
½ an egg, well cooked.
4) In the end, you can add a teaspoon of olive oil, a small quantity of grated "parmigiano" or "grana" cheese, or some spices (not too spicy).
......
If your child doesn't want to finish the meal, or if they want to eat a little more, don't worry: sometimes they are more hungry, sometimes less.
BABIES 7 to 9 MONTHS OLD
If you have not introduced food for dinner, you can now introduce it.
At 7 to 9 months old, babies usually eat 5 meals in a day:
Breakfast: milk (breastmilk or formula milk)
Snack in the morning (it is not mandatory): milk, or fruit, or yogurt
Lunch: a full meal
Afternoon snack: milk, or fruit, or yogurt
Dinner: a full meal
During the night: You can start to reduce (or avoid) feedings during the night, if you want to. Try to get the child accustomed to fall asleep without feeding (try holding them, offer a pacifier...).
SOLID FOODS
When you begin offering food to your baby, it is common to start with creamy food. But babies can also grab some small pieces of food with their hands.
When they are 8 to 9 months old, if you haven't offered small pieces of food yet, it is time to start trying.
There is just one important thing to know: we must not offer ROUND FOODS, because they can be a choking hazard.
You must cut food into small pieces, square pieces, or long sticks. You must not offer naturally round foods without cutting them (for example: cherry tomatoes, cheese balls, grapes, hazelnuts...). You must not cut foods into round pieces.
Examples in the pictures below:
TEETHING
Children start growing teeth usually around 6 to 9 months. Some babies grow them later, up to 1 year of age. When they start growing teeth, you can start to wash them with a small amount of children's toothpaste. Don't wait too long to start washing your baby's teeth, or they might develop painful tooth decay.
If your baby cries or fusses because of teething pain, it can help to offer them toys to chew on; in case they cry a lot, you can give them a dose of Paracetamol (Tachipirina), once in a while.
CHILDREN 9 TO 12 MONTHS of age
You can go on offering both creamy and solid foods, that they can grab themselves, as shown before.
You can find many ideas online, if you need to. Keep offering all the nutrients.
If you haven’t tried NUTS (nut, hazelnut, almond, peanut…) you can try them as well. Nuts can be offered in creams or ice creams or flour or crushed (Not whole, because they are round: remeber, we cannot give round foods).
CHILDREN OVER 12 MONTHS:
Children over 1 year old should be able to eat the same food their family eat. They should be having around 4-5 meals every day: breakfast, snack in the morning, lunch, snack in the afternoon, dinner.
As milk, they can drink whole cow milk, or milk type 3, as we've seen before. They need around 200 to 400 ml of milk or yoghurt per day, if they don’t breastfeed.
They should keep eating all the nutrients, as seen before:
Vegetables: up to 50% of every meal
Carbohydrates (pasta, rice, other cereals, potatoes): up to 25% of every meal
Proteins (meat or fish or cheese or egg or legumes): up to 25% of every meal
CAN CHILDREN BE VEGETARIAN/VEGAN?
Many of my Indian families follow a vegetarian or vegan diet. I am a vegetarian myself.
For children up to 2 years of age, however, it is better to offer meat and fish as well. So, I suggest you to try and offer some meat and fish to your child, even if you don't eat them. It doesn't need to be cow or suine meat. You can offer poultry meat and fish.
If you don't want to give any meat to your child, I suggest:
-> talk to your doctor to consider iron and vitamin B12 supplements
-> try to offer other proteins in each meal: cheese, or egg, or legumes (beans, chickpeas, peas, lentils...).
If children don't eat meat nor fish nor eggs nor cheese, it is important to talk to your doctor about it. they absolutely need to take supplements.
IS MY CHILD EATING ENOUGH?
As parents, we are often worried that our child is not eating enough, so we give everything the child wants, as long as they eat: including milk multiple times every days, or biscuits, sweets, snacks...
That is not correct; it is better to always offer healthy foods, every day, including vegetables: the child will eat what they feel like.
If they refuse a food, we cannot force them to eat, but don't offer sweets or milk to make up for it. We will try cooking something different for the next meal, but always including all the nutrients.
-> Remember that your goal is not only to give "ENOUGH" food, but to teach your child to eat HEALTHILY, and eat all the nutrients.
-> Remember not to compare your child to others: every child is different, some are taller, some are shorter, some weigh more, some less! Just check with your pediatrician that you child is growing well.
If they are gowing well, you don't nedd to worry about giving them MORE food.
PICKY EATERS
Often children can be "picky eaters"-> they want only a few different foods, and refuse fruit and vegetables.
Especially this happens between 2 to 5 years of age.
It is important to keep cooking all the foods, even if the child does not eat everything. Offering it gently, withouth forcing them to eat, but suggesting them they can try the food.
Show them that you, the parents, or older siblings, like to eat all the foods.
Try cooking the food together with the child, to get them interested.
Don't always give the child sweets, milk, snacks.
It must be you, mom and dad, that gently but consistently keep offering healthy food and not unhealthy snack to your child. They cannot decide for themselves yet.
Slowly, they will learn!
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If you have read through this article, I hope you found it helpful.
I wish you good luck, in the messy job of feeding your child.
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