Feeding babies solids before 6 months
When, What, and How to Introduce Solid Foods | Nutrition
For more information about how to know if your baby is ready to starting eating foods, what first foods to offer, and what to expect, watch these videos from 1,000 Days.
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend children be introduced to foods other than breast milk or infant formula when they are about 6 months old. Introducing foods before 4 months old is not recommended. Every child is different. How do you know if your child is ready for foods other than breast milk or infant formula? You can look for these signs that your child is developmentally ready.
Your child:
- Sits up alone or with support.
- Is able to control head and neck.
- Opens the mouth when food is offered.
- Swallows food rather than pushes it back out onto the chin.
- Brings objects to the mouth.
- Tries to grasp small objects, such as toys or food.
- Transfers food from the front to the back of the tongue to swallow.
What Foods Should I Introduce to My Child First?
The American Academy of Pediatrics says that for most children, you do not need to give foods in a certain order. Your child can begin eating solid foods at about 6 months old. By the time he or she is 7 or 8 months old, your child can eat a variety of foods from different food groups. These foods include infant cereals, meat or other proteins, fruits, vegetables, grains, yogurts and cheeses, and more.
If your child is eating infant cereals, it is important to offer a variety of fortifiedalert icon infant cereals such as oat, barley, and multi-grain instead of only rice cereal. Only providing infant rice cereal is not recommended by the Food and Drug Administration because there is a risk for children to be exposed to arsenic. Visit the U.S. Food & Drug Administrationexternal icon to learn more.
How Should I Introduce My Child to Foods?
Your child needs certain vitamins and minerals to grow healthy and strong.
Now that your child is starting to eat food, be sure to choose foods that give your child all the vitamins and minerals they need.
Click here to learn more about some of these vitamins & minerals.
Let your child try one single-ingredient food at a time at first. This helps you see if your child has any problems with that food, such as food allergies. Wait 3 to 5 days between each new food. Before you know it, your child will be on his or her way to eating and enjoying lots of new foods.
Introduce potentially allergenic foods when other foods are introduced.
Potentially allergenic foods include cow’s milk products, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soy, and sesame. Drinking cow’s milk or fortified soy beverages is not recommended until your child is older than 12 months, but other cow’s milk products, such as yogurt, can be introduced before 12 months. If your child has severe eczema and/or egg allergy, talk with your child’s doctor or nurse about when and how to safely introduce foods with peanuts.
How Should I Prepare Food for My Child to Eat?
At first, it’s easier for your child to eat foods that are mashed, pureed, or strained and very smooth in texture. It can take time for your child to adjust to new food textures. Your child might cough, gag, or spit up. As your baby’s oral skills develop, thicker and lumpier foods can be introduced.
Some foods are potential choking hazards, so it is important to feed your child foods that are the right texture for his or her development. To help prevent choking, prepare foods that can be easily dissolved with saliva and do not require chewing. Feed small portions and encourage your baby to eat slowly. Always watch your child while he or she is eating.
Here are some tips for preparing foods:
- Mix cereals and mashed cooked grains with breast milk, formula, or water to make it smooth and easy for your baby to swallow.
- Mash or puree vegetables, fruits and other foods until they are smooth.
- Hard fruits and vegetables, like apples and carrots, usually need to be cooked so they can be easily mashed or pureed.
- Cook food until it is soft enough to easily mash with a fork.
- Remove all fat, skin, and bones from poultry, meat, and fish, before cooking.
- Remove seeds and hard pits from fruit, and then cut the fruit into small pieces.
- Cut soft food into small pieces or thin slices.
- Cut cylindrical foods like hot dogs, sausage and string cheese into short thin strips instead of round pieces that could get stuck in the airway.
- Cut small spherical foods like grapes, cherries, berries and tomatoes into small pieces.
- Cook and finely grind or mash whole-grain kernels of wheat, barley, rice, and other grains.
Learn more about potential choking hazards and how to prevent your child from choking.
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Why You Should Wait Until 6 Months
Recommendations for introducing solids have changed a lot, but there are so many benefits of waiting until 6 months.
Read on to find out why.
Recommendations for introducing solids have changed a lot in the last couple of decades. Women used to be pressured to feed rice cereal to their babies as early as a few weeks old for a better night’s sleep.
When I was a baby, moms were told to start solids between 6 weeks and 4 months old, depending on baby’s sleep pattern and if the baby was struggling with reflux or excessive spit up.
When I became a mom, I started introducing solids at 4 months, based on different recommendations. Recent research and the reactions of my kids makes me wish I had waited to introduce solids.
Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommend exclusive breastfeeding until baby is 6 months old.
“Introducing babies to complementary foods too early can cause them to miss out on important nutrients that come from breast milk and infant formula.” explains Chloe M.
Barrera, MPH, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Today, despite these recommendations and studies that advise otherwise, over 54% of women surveyed introduce solids to their infants before 6 months. The survey showed that 16.3% of babies are given solids before 4 months and 38.3% between 4-5 months.
In another survey, parents cited these reasons for introducing solids before 6 months:
- 90% said they thought their baby was old enough to start eating solids
- 71% said their baby seemed hungry a lot of the time
- 55% said their doctor or health care professional recommended this
Why Wait Until 6 Months to Introduce Solids?
Babies are born with very immature digestive systems. While the GI tract is still maturing, infant’s systems are not equipped to digest anything but breast milk. If anything but breastmilk is introduced, even formula, it can permanently alter baby’s gut microbiota, causing problems like necrotizing enterocolitis, diarrheal disease, and allergies.
“In infants, the ring of muscle between the esophagus and the stomach—the lower esophageal sphincter (LES)—is not fully mature, allowing stomach contents to flow backward,” says Andrew E. Mulberg, M.D., a pediatrician and pediatric gastroenterologist. “In time, the LES will mature and open only when the baby swallows and will remain tightly closed the rest of the time, keeping stomach contents where they belong”
That said, some mamas simply don’t produce enough breast milk (and other moms may not want to breastfeed for various reasons). If breastfeeding doesn’t work for you, that’s ok. There are plenty of healthy formulas, and many babies thrive on formula. Consider adding probiotics to baby’s formula to help with immune and gut function.
But that’s just the beginning. Here, a host of other reasons to hold off on introducing solids until 6 months:
1. Long-term health
Holding off on all solids until 6 months of age can boost your child’s long-term health.
Because infants who start eating food need less calories from breastmilk, they may lose out on some of the most important benefits of breastfeeding. These include lower risk of obesity, diabetes, respiratory and ear infections, as well as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Breastfeeding also reduces the frequency of doctor visits, hospitalizations, and prescriptions, according to the CDC.
2. Improved immune system
“One of the benefits of breastmilk is that each mother provides custom-designed milk to protect her infant,” according to Dr. Sears. “When a baby is exposed to a new germ, mother’s body manufactures antibodies to that germ.” One study suggests that these maternal antibodies in breast milk improve an infant’s intestinal immune system—an effect that continues to benefit baby well into adulthood.
3. Allergy Prevention
Breastfeeding exclusively for the first six months has been shown to significantly lessen the risk and severity of food allergies in families with a strong history of them.
It also reduces the risk of skin sensitivities, like eczema.
To further prevent allergies, studies suggest introducing allergenic foods as soon as baby is ready to try solids can reduce your child’s risk of developing food allergies by up to 80 percent. But since babies can’t exactly eat nuts or even peanut butter, I recommend trying a product called Ready, Set, Food!, which gives parents the option to add the most common allergenic foods (eggs, nuts, and milk) to breastmilk, formula, or puree in a safe and effective way.
4. Higher IQ
One study found that exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months or longer was associated with a higher IQ. At seven-year followups, the IQ of exclusively breastfed babies was an average of 3.8 points higher gain than those who were not exclusively breastfeed during this time period. Researchers think this is because maternal milk is rich in fatty acids and other bioactive components essential for brain development.
5. Mama’s Milk Supply
The best way to maintain your milk supply is to keep nursing—nursing is all about supply and demand.
When you start introducing solids, baby needs less breast milk since he/she is getting calories elsewhere. But babies under 6 months of age get all of the calories and nutrients they need from breast milk, so there is no need to put your supply at risk by introducing solids.
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There Are Always Exceptions
Like just about anything with babies, there is no hard-and-fast rule when it comes to introducing solids. At the end of the day, every baby is different, and every baby develops at different speeds. Some babies are more advanced and may be ready for solid foods around 5-5.5 months; other babies may not be ready for solid foods until 7-8 months. And for other babies, your pediatrician may recommend starting solids if baby needs extra calories or nutrition.
Don’t focus too much on the number if it seems like your baby is showing signs that he/she is ready a littler earlier or a little later. Always work with your doctor to best determine the right time to introduce solids to your baby.
A Note About Introducing Solids
Waiting until after 6 months of age to introduce solids and water is important for optimal long-term health. After 6 months, watch your baby for signs of readiness. Baby should be able to support his/her head very well and sit up on his/her own. Baby may even start to show interest, by reaching for your food.
If baby reaches 6 months and doesn’t seem ready for solids, talk to your pediatrician about how to proceed. For most babies, iron stores begin to drop around this time—many babies will begin to need more nutrition than mom’s milk alone can provide. Waiting too long to introduce solids can also lead to delayed developmental skills, food texture sensitivities, and allergies.
Once baby is ready to start solids, go slowly. Just because you’re ready to start introducing solids doesn’t mean you can feed baby whatever you’re eating. Start with complementary foods and continue breastfeeding. Check out this article to explore the best iron-rich foods for baby.
The WHO recommends that, in addition to breast milk, baby eats
- solids 2-3 times a day between 6-8 months,
- 3-4 times a day between 9-11 months,
- 3-4 times a day with an additional snack 1-2 times a day between 12-24 months.
Ready to start introducing solids? I recommend trying baby led weaning. Once you start, watch for signs of discomfort, like indigestion, constipation, diarrhea, and increased spitting up. If baby shows signs of discomfort, he/she may not be ready just yet. Reduce the amount of food you’re introducing and consider adding probiotics to help with digestion. If that doesn’t work, take a little break and try again in a few days.
How About You?
When did you start feeding baby solids? How did you know your baby was ready?
Solid food | Tervisliku toitumise informatsioon
From the age of 6 months, in addition to breast milk, the baby needs to be supplemented to provide the necessary amount of energy and nutrients. As you grow older, you can gradually switch to regular food (cooking it without frying, and also without adding salt and sugar). Children over 1 year of age, in addition to regular food and complementary foods, can continue to drink breast milk, but by the age of two, the child should completely switch to a common table. Exposure of a child to grain-containing foods during breastfeeding may protect him from gluten intolerance in the future. When offering a child complementary foods or regular food, care should be taken, so that the food is varied . Both during breastfeeding and during the transition to regular food, the baby may experience gases or allergies .
For children over two years of age, the same nutritional recommendations apply as for adults, but the recommended serving sizes are smaller.
Children under three years old (actually, a person of any age) do not need salty or sweet snacks, sodas, deep fried and/or very sweet and salty foods! nine0019
By the sixth month of life, the infant's eating habits and digestive system are mature enough to offer more solid foods in addition to breast milk. Proteins, carbohydrates and fats contained in regular food are different from the easily digestible sugars, fats and proteins that enter the baby's body with breast milk. Therefore, a so-called certain familiarization period is needed so that the baby's digestive system has time to get used to a new type of food. If the baby is breastfed as often as before, then these feeds cover about 2/3 of the energy needed by an 8-month-old baby. The remaining approximately 200 kilocalories should come from the various macronutrients found in complementary food ingredients, i.
e. proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Complementary foods are needed so that the child can slowly move to the common table, as well as to obtain the nutrients necessary for age. Complementary foods for babies are a completely unfamiliar thing. It differs significantly from breast milk and will take time to learn how to eat it. nine0011
Proper complementary food is food that is hard enough to eat with a spoon, contains all the important types of food (except sweets), is rich in nutrients and does not contain salt or sugar. Complementary foods should always be offered to the child from a spoon and never from a bottle, as in this case the child will never understand what to eat in an upright position using a spoon. In addition, bottle feeding contains too much water, so it may not provide enough energy and nutrients. As the child grows older, you can allow him to put pieces of food in his mouth with his fingers. Simultaneously with the gradual introduction of solid food into the baby's diet, his interest in breast milk gradually begins to fade.
This is completely natural and as the first birthday approaches, you can start to slowly reduce the number of breastfeeds. All children are different, so their preferences and needs are also different, but it is important that the child's diet is varied and covers all the nutritional needs of a growing body for life and development. nine0011
Complementary foods for infants by month:
0-6 months
6-8 months
9-11 months
substances can be markedly reduced.
World Health Organization recommendations for the introduction of complementary foods for children aged 6-23 months.
| Age (in months) | Frequency Frequency | The portion for 1 feeding | food consistency |
| 6 | 9000 1 or 2 times a day | 7
quantity | Finely pounded or mashed |
| 6-8 | 2-3 feedings per day 1 10047 up to 1 DL | Crowned or pureed | |
| 9-11 | 3-4 feeding per day 1-2 snacks per day | 9000 1-1. 5 DL 1111111111111111111111 | Crowned or finely busy |
| 12-2-23 | 3-4 feeding per day 1-2 snacks | .5 DL | Small pieces |
The recommendations in the table are general and give an idea of how much a child could eat on average, however the exact amount and frequency of feedings may vary from child to child. The child must learn to understand that when the feeling of satiety has come, eating should be stopped. A child is full when he turns his head away and doesn't want to eat anymore. However, it is important to make sure that the baby still ate at least a little, as many children refuse to eat before they even start eating. We need to find a balance between these two extremes. The child should be introduced as early as possible to the regularity of meals and the fact that constant snacking should be avoided during the day. The baby is fed approximately every three hours: this can be breast milk, the main meal or a snack.
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Introducing solid food: why, when, what and how
Introducing solid food: why babies need it
growth and development.
During the first six months, the baby's body uses the iron stored in the womb. Some iron also comes from breast milk and/or formula. But as the baby grows, the reserves of this substance in the body decrease. And the iron that a child receives from breast milk or formula is already not enough at the age of about six months. nine0011
Through the introduction of solid foods, the child also learns to eat, gets to know new tastes and textures of different foods. At the same time, he develops teeth and jaws, and he also acquires skills that will later be needed for language development.
Signs it's time to introduce solid foods
You'll know when it's time to introduce solid foods by how your baby develops and behaves.
Your child is ready for solid food if:
- holds head and neck well and can sit upright with support
- shows interest in food - for example, looking at the contents of your plate
- reaching for your food
- opens his mouth when you offer him food from a spoon.
Most children show these signs by about six months, but in general everyone is individual.
It is not recommended to introduce solid foods before four months of age.
If your baby is about seven months old and hasn't started solid foods yet, you can talk to a nurse or pediatrician. nine0011
The best time to offer your baby solid food for the first time is when both you and he are in a good mood.
He is also more likely to try new foods after breast milk or formula. The fact is that when a child is really hungry, he only wants milk or formula, because he knows that he will be satisfied. At the same time, there will still be room for other food in his tummy.
Over time, you will learn to tell if your baby is hungry or full, wants to try something or is tired. nine0011
Your child is hungry, if:
- gets excited when he sees you cooking for him
- leans towards you while sitting in a highchair
- opens its mouth when you are about to feed it.
Your child no longer wants to eat if:
- turns away
- loses interest or gets distracted
- repels spoon
- purses his lips.
In what portions should the new food be introduced to the child? Start with 1-2 teaspoons and increase according to your baby's appetite. By 12 months, he should be eating about three small meals a day, plus breast milk or formula. nine0011
Consistency of solid food
The first solid food can be smooth, pureed or in soft pieces , depending on your baby's preference. Then the child can quickly move on to finely chopped, and then just to finely chopped foods.
The child needs food of various consistencies. This will help him learn to chew, and chewing, in turn, contributes to the development of speech. It also encourages the child to learn to eat on his own and will prevent eating problems as he develops. nine0011
By 12 months, the baby should already be eating the same as the rest of the family.
You may have to cut some foods into smaller pieces, and boil the vegetables well.
Do not leave the child unattended while eating, make sure that he does not choke. Be especially careful with foods such as nuts and small-boned meats, as they are easy to choke on. If the child can already move around, try to seat him while eating. If you sit next to each other while the baby is eating, he will most likely sit more quietly. nine0011
Types of food when introducing solid foods
The child will be happy to try any new food, so there is no need to prepare something “special” for him.
You can introduce solid foods in any order, as long as you include iron-rich foods and cook foods of the right consistency.
Foods rich in iron include:
- iron-fortified baby cereals
- minced meat, poultry and fish
- tofu and legumes, cooked
- mashed or boiled eggs (do not give raw or soft-boiled eggs).
Iron-rich foods can be supplemented with other healthy foods:
- vegetables such as boiled potatoes, carrots or green vegetables such as broccoli
- fruit - e.
g. banana, apple, melon or avocado - cereals - e.g. oats, bread, rice and pasta
- Dairy products such as yogurt and full fat cheese.
These products can be combined as there is no need to administer only one product at a time. By offering your child a variety of foods, you will allow him to try a variety of new tastes and get a lot of nutrients. nine0011
With our solid food introduction tips, you can get your child interested in new foods and make the eating process smoother and playful.
Breast milk and formula when introducing solid foods
Continue breastfeeding or formula until at least 12 months while introducing solid foods.
If you are not sure that the baby is getting the right amount of milk when solids are introduced, pay attention to his behavior. nine0011
For example, if a child has eaten a lot of solid food and is not getting enough milk or is refusing milk, the daily milk feeds may need to be made less frequent but longer.
If the baby does not want to eat solid food, he may have had too much milk. This may be a signal that portions of milk should be reduced.
By about nine months of age, babies usually develop enough chewing and swallowing skills to eat solid foods before milk, not after. nine0011
Solid food does not replace breast milk or formula. If the transition to solid foods instead of milk and/or formula occurs too quickly, a child may miss an important milestone in their diet.
Water administration
At the age of six months, the child can be offered chilled boiled water in a cup during meals or at other times. This is to help your baby learn to drink from a cup, but at this age, he still doesn't need liquids other than breast milk or formula. When the child is one year old, he can be offered fresh tap water without boiling. nine0011
Foods and drinks to avoid
Some foods should not be given to children under a certain age:
- honey under 12 months to avoid the risk of infant botulism
- raw eggs, soft-boiled eggs, and products containing raw eggs, such as homemade mayonnaise, up to 12 months - bacteria found in raw eggs may be harmful to infants
- skim milk products up to two years
- Whole nuts and similar hard foods up to three years - due to risk of choking.
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Also, certain drinks should not be given to children until a certain age Salt and sugar do not need to be added to baby food. Infants and young children are not suitable for highly processed foods and packaged foods that are high in fat, sugar and/or salt. These include cakes, cookies, chips and fried foods. Early introduction of allergenic foods may reduce risk development of food allergy in a child. All children, including children at high risk of allergies, should try allergenic food from about six months of age . Food allergy and introduction of solid foods
