Tips and food plan to Follow before you start foods to 6th month baby:
Let's imagine that I have a new piece of food that I want you to eat but I'm not going to let you see it or touch it ,you just have to trust me to put that spoonful into your mouth, would you eat it?
You certainly would not!
And babies are exactly the same, before they will even eat new food, they need to be able to see it, smell it,touch it with hands, and then taste it. If you want your baby to love food, you need to let them experience the food with all of their senses,this means you need to let them smell it, poke it, smear it, smash it all around,as well as play with it. Giving your baby the opportunity to explore the new food with all their sensors, including touch and taste, helps them learn about the different textures, smells, and tastes of different food,which means that it's going to be more likely that they will try a wider variety of food.
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So, just set up a splash mat underneath your baby's high
chair and embrace the mess. And next time you try and
put food in your baby's mouth that they have never seen or tried before, you can imagine me coming towards you with a spoonful of food
that you have never seen, smelled, or eaten before and
trying to get you to eat it.This is just the first tip to help you get your baby
to love eating solids.This tip will help you to introduce new food successfully,reduce picky eating, as well as ensure your baby
develops healthy eating habits which are going to last into the future.
The second thing you should
do is offer everything.It is extremely important that you offer your baby
a wide variety of foods in their first year of life, particularly in regards
to taste and texture. This will ensure your baby
develops an adventurous palate and willingness to try
a wider variety of food.
It might be surprising but
babies actually love food which is flavor packed, so don't be afraid to
give your baby curries, savory foods, sweet foods,
sour foods, bland foods as well as creamy foods. And when you're offering
food to your baby, present it in lots of different ways, this includes changing up
the texture of that food. So for example, if you
want to give them potato, you might give it to them in pureed form by giving them a potato soup, or you might mash the
potato or bake the potato, or you could chop up the
potato and put it in a soup as a mixed texture.
The third important point is that,You also want to continue
to offer your baby food that they have rejected. Now, it is not unusual for babies to refuse to eat a new piece of food that they've seen for the
first second or third time. In fact, it can take 15 to 20 exposures of a new piece of food
before they will accept it. So, given it can take this long for a baby to accept a new food,it is really important that you continue to offer your baby food that they have rejected and not give up after the third or fourth attempt. So,You also want to be responsive, but do not force your baby to eat food.
Now, this can be extremely difficult if you have spent all morning
preparing food for your baby, but it's your role as a parent to decide what food you're
going to offer your baby, what time you're going to
give your baby the food.But it is your baby choice on whether or not they're going
to eat in the first place, and what food offered they are
actually going to try and eat as well as how much of that
food they're going to eat. When you push a baby to eat
more food than they want, you might feel better in that moment but you are actually
teaching the baby bad habits, which increases the risk of them becoming obese in the future. Therefore, the fourth important tip is that you stop feeding your baby when they have indicated
that they are full, and they do this in many different ways. So they might arch their back away, they might close their lips, they might push the spoon away, they might start to play or throw the food off the high chair, or they actually might start
to get extremely distracted.
Now, the fifth tip can can
be a little bit challenging for us as parents, So what is the fifth tip?
It is stay calm. Remember, meal times can be
extremely stressful, particularly when your baby is choosing not to eat any food. But your reaction during meal times has a direct correlation on
whether or not your child is going to eat food. If you are happy and relaxed then your baby is also going
to be happy and relaxed and feel safe and willing to try food,but if you are stressed or anxious then your baby is going to
pick up on those emotions and also becomes stress and anxious. And this isn't good
because stress and anxiety actually suppresses one's appetite, so your baby is going to be hungry and not willing to try food. So it's important to keep meal times fun and enjoyable for everyone. And one way you can do
this is by sitting down and having a meal with your
baby at least once a day. When you sit down and eat with your baby, you shift your focus from how
much they're actually eating to how much you are eating.And when you are eating with them, you are modeling healthy eating habits as well as showing them
that the food is safe because you are obviously eating it, and they also see how to
actually chew the food because they see you put
the food in your mouth and then they see what
you do with the food
once it's in your mouth. And this is going to make it
easier for your baby to firstly,
feel comfortable enough
to try the new food.
It is also really important
to reduce distractions. You also want to make sure
that your baby is in comfortable sitting position. During meal times we want
babies to be focusing on the skill of eating as
well as what they're eating. So, you need to turn off TVs and devices including mobile phones
and i Pads or tablets, and that is because when
these devices are playing, meal times in general are
going to be extremely long because babies tend to
get extremely distracted by the devices so they
don't eat that quickly. They're also unlikely to
process what they're eating, so they're not processing the taste, the smell or the look of that food which can result in picky
eating in the future.
Now I’m going to tell you how to SAFELY do 10 new foods in 10 days.
Alright, Let’s look at the first 10 days of baby-led weaning.
DAY 1 - AVOCADO
Avocados are soft and so easy to cut into strips
about the size of your adult pinky finger that babies can pick up and feed themselves. Avocado is also a high fat food as babies do benefit from fatty foods for their
still developing brain.Take one of the quarters Avocado , peel back the skin,
slice it into sticks about the size of your adult pinky
finger, put it in your baby’s bowl and offer to the baby.
DAY 2 - BANANA
Second easy food to introduce for baby-led
weaning is BANANA. After peeling the banana,Cut
the banana in half lengthwise, then in quarters.Then cut that in half to get 8 spears of banana.
Put a few in your baby’s bowl, who can then
rake or scoop the banana sticks up with their
whole hand or palm's grasp.There is lots of nutrition in fruit like bananas.
DAY 3 - SWEET POTATO
Day 3 of baby-led weaning…let’s do the
first starchy food and SWEET POTATO is a great
pick.This is so super easy.Wash it then roast your sweet potato, let it cool down, remove the skin, cut
the cooked sweet potato into strips
before serve some strips to the baby. Sweet potatoes are nice to have in your baby-led
weaning repertoire because carbohydrates are important for fueling your baby’s body.
DAY 4 - CHICKEN
Chicken is super easy…but my tip here is
CHOOSE the fattier cuts of poultry like legs,wings and thighs, and here’s why: The fattier the meat is the more moisture
the fat is providing. That melty fat lubricates the protein and
makes it easier and safer for babies to swallow. After boiling it you can easily remove the fatty meat from
the bone, serve it with a bunch of low sodium or no salt added broth & offer that to the
baby.Meat like chicken contains iron and it’s
a cool new taste and texture for your baby to explore.
DAY 5 - YOGURT
Alright, day 5 and it’s time for our first allergenic food.
There are 9 foods that account for about 90%
of food allergy and we call them the Big 9. Cow’s milk protein is one of the big 9 and
YOGURT is a super easy way to introduce your baby to the potentially allergenic food COW’S
MILK PROTEIN.We don’t do fluid cow’s milk in place
of infant milk like breast milk or formula until babies turn 1, but it’s important
to introduce cow’s milk protein early and often to help prevent milk allergy.But if your baby has had formula, formula
is made out of cow’s milk, so your baby has already been introduced to this allergen.Yogurt is a great way to introduce your baby
to the potentially allergenic food cow’s milk.Find a plain, full fat yogurt. Plain means not fruited or vanilla.Put six spoons of the yogurt in a bowl and give it to baby by feeding spoon gradually.
WEEK 1 RECAP
O k, so far we have done 5 FOODS for baby-led
weaning over 5 days…and you’re done with
week one with baby-led weaning, but here’s
a tip for the Saturday and Sunday food.It’s BETTER to include the above mentioned familiar
foods from days 1-4 which are low risk foods over the weekend too,and just no NEW foods over
the weekend.
Ready for week 2?
DAY 6 - APPLE
New week, we start over at the top with another new fruit, Apple. But it can be a huge choking risk if you offer
them raw,so no raw, crunchy or crispy apples for babies.But you can slice, core and peel apples then
poach them in a little water to get them fork tender which is safe for babies to eat.
DAY 7 - CAULIFLOWER
Alright, how to make cauliflower safe for baby-led weaning?Cut the cauliflower florets with the handle
as long as you can, spread them on a baking sheet, cover in whatever oil you use at home
and don’t be shy about seasoning your vegetables,just steer clear of salt for babies.Then you roast until the cauliflower is nice
and soft. Put some of the individual pieces in a bowl
and serve it to your baby.
DAY 8 - COOKED WHOLE GRAIN
OK there are ALL sorts of grains that work great for baby-led weaning.From the ages of
six to 12 months, it is recommended by Healthy Eating Research to offer
the infant a variety of whole grain products, such as brown rice or whole grain cereals. boil the grains nicely to make it full soothe for your baby when it cools, you put 8 to 10 spoons into
a bowl, and feed to your baby.
DAY 9 -RICE
Brown rice is an extremely nutritious grain with lots of health benefits for babies (more so than white rice). You can give your baby boil rice, rice puree with vegetable, mashed rice or rice porridge.
DAY 10 - EGG
Alright it’s day 5 of your second week of baby-led weaning so it’s time for another
allergenic food and let’s do egg. You can pick any allergenic food in any order
you want for your baby, but because milk, egg and peanut are the 3 most common pediatric
food allergies, I like to start with those foods first
And eggs are super easy for baby-led weaning.Eggs have a yolk and a white,
right? The yolk is where the iron and the other nutrition
is, but the WHITE is where the protein which is the potentially allergenic part of egg
is located.We want baby to have both the white and the
yolk, so what I love to do is make a fried or boiled egg.
WEEK 2 RECAP
OK, there you have it, 10 easy foods to do
in the first 10 days of baby-led weaning.
Week 1 we did 5 foods, week 2 we did another
5 foods and then you can do rotation of foods.
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