Here you can 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 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 (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 them 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
After the first few tries, 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.
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 for children 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 beverages, because they contain too much sugar. You can make home-made fruit juices/smoothies with fresh fruit.
WHICH FOODS WE MUST AVOID?
Babies can eat almost every food.
We only suggest that you offer them new foods GRADUALLY: not many new foods on 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 in their foods, at least until 12 months of age, including sugary - sweets foods (cakes, chocolate, biscuits, puddings, commercial fruit juices, commercial sweet beverages....)
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:
Vegetables and fruit
Carbohydrates: cereals: such as rice, wheat, corn, and cereal-based food such as pasta and bread. Potatoes.
Proteins: meat, fish, cheese, legumes or egg.
How to cook a baby meal for 5 to 7 months old:
1) Boil vegetables to make a vegetable broth. You can use any vegetables you like. For one meal you will need around 150-180 ml of broth and 2-3 tablespoons of mashed/pureed vegetables. 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 ready-made in the stores. For example rice cream, corn ("mais" in Italian) cream, tapioca, wheat ("grano") 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: 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. Actually, babies can also grab small pieces of food with their hands, from 6 months of age.
When they are 7 to 9 months old, if you haven't offer small pieces of food before, 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 and a half 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:
CHILDREN OVER 12 MONTHS:
Children over 1 year old should be able to eat almost everything their family eats. They should be having around 5 meals every day (breakfast, snack in the morning, lunch, snack in the afternoon, dinner).
As milk, they can drink cow milk or breastmilk, as we've seen before. They need around 200 to 400 ml of milk per day.
They should be eating all the nutrients, as seen before:
Vegetables: up to 50% of every meal
Carbohydrates (cereals and 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 it. It doesn't need to be cow or suine meat. You can offer poultry meat.
If you don't want to give meat to your child, I suggest:
-> talk to your doctor to consider iron and vitamin B12 supplements
-> try to offer one other protein in each meal: cheese, or egg, or legumes (beans, chickpeas, peas, lentils...)
IS MY CHILD EATING ENOUGH?
Remember that your goal is not only to give "ENOUGH" food, but to teach your child to eat HEALTHILY.
Many parents tell me that they are worried that their child is not eating enough, so they give everything the child wants, as long as they eat: including milk multiple times every days, biscuits, snacks...
We instead suggest to always offer healthy foods, every day, including vegetables: the child will eat what they feel like. If they refuse the meal, don't offer sweets or milk to make up for it, nor cook another, less healthy meal.
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 you child is growing well, they don't need MORE food, but they might need BETTER food: if you feed your child a lot of pasta/rice, potatoes, snacks, milk, and nothing else, they will not be healthy.
You can buy multivitamin supplements to make up for it, for a period, but this will not resolve the problem.
It must be you, mom and dad, that offer healthy food every day.
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 baby.
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