How to feed 11 month baby

Sample Menu for a Baby 8 to 12 Months Old

Ages & Stages

Now that your baby is eating solid foods, planning meals can be more challenging. At this age, your baby needs between 750 and 900 calories each day, of which about 400 to 500 should come from breast milk or formula (if you are not breastfeeding)—roughly 24 ounces (720 mL) a day. Breast milk and formula contain vitamins, minerals, and other important components for brain growth.

At about eight months, you may want to introduce foods that are slightly coarser than strained pureed foods. They require more chewing than baby foods. You can expand your baby's diet to include soft foods such as yogurt, oatmeal, mashed banana, mashed potatoes, or even thicker or lumpy pureed vegetables. Eggs (including scrambled) are an excellent source of protein, as are cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, and avocado.

Sample menu ideas for an 8- to 12-month-old baby:

1 cup = 8 ounces = 240 ml
¾ cup = 6 ounces = 180 ml
½ cup = 4 ounces = 120 ml
¼ cup = 2 ounces = 60 ml

Breakfast

2 to 4 ounces cereal, or 1 mashed or scrambled egg
2 to 4 ounces mashed or diced fruit
Breastmilk or 4 to 6 ounces formula

Snack

Lunch

2 to 4 ounces yogurt or cottage cheese, or pureed or diced beans or meat
2 to 4 ounces cooked pureed or diced yellow or orange vegetables
Breastmilk or 4 to 6 ounces formula

Snack

Dinner

2 to 4 ounces diced diced poultry, meat, or tofu
2 to 4 ounces cooked green vegetables
2 to 4 ounces cooked soft-whole grain pasta or potato
2 to 4 ounces diced or mashed fruit
Breastmilk or 4 to 6 ounces formula

Before bedtime

Breastmilk or 6 to 8 ounces formula, or water. (If breastmilk or formula, follow with water or brush teeth afterward).

More information

Sample Menu for a One-Year-Old
Starting Solid Foods
Breastfeeding Mealtime Milestones
Ask the Pediatrician: Is it OK to make my own baby food?

Last Updated: 8/12/2022

Source: Caring for Your Baby and Young Child: Birth to Age 5 7th Edition (Copyright © 2019 American Academy of Pediatrics)

The information contained on this Web site should not be used as a substitute for the medical care and advice of your pediatrician. There may be variations in treatment that your pediatrician may recommend based on individual facts and circumstances.

A Sample Routine to Follow

What can babies eat at 11 months?

At 11 months, many babies have developed the ability to feed themselves. They might be able to awkwardly hold a spoon to shovel mashed food into their mouths. More predominantly, however, they are able to hold the food in their fingers and put it in the mouth. While this might be messy, it’s all part of the normal growth and development process.

At this stage in life, the baby does not depend on breast milk alone — despite its benefits. You might have started weaning her off the breast and introduced some solid foods into her diet around the 6-month mark.

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As she grows older, you need to diversify the kind of food you give her so that she can develop her palate and be able to draw nutrition from more than one source. So, what baby foods should you add to the diet of your 11-month-old?

Here are some options:

Eggs contain plenty of nutrients — especially the yolks — and are easy to eat and digest
Fruits contain various vitamins and minerals, and small teeth can easily bite into bananas, apples, and oranges (remember to cut up the fruits into small, bite-sized pieces for your baby)
Fish and poultry
Leafy greens contain iron, which is absent in breast milk.
Dairy products (like yogurt and cheese), though it’s advisable to delay giving cow’s milk until your baby is older than one year
Dry cereal
Crackers

How much should an 11-month-old baby eat?

As the first year of life comes to a close, your baby is able to eat most of what the rest of the family is having at their meal times. Obviously, however, the baby will eat far smaller amounts than the rest of you.

A loose rule of thumb is that the baby usually takes down three main meals during the course of the day and a couple of snacks in between the meals. When the baby eats is usually dependent on their appetite and your schedule.

Delving deeper into the quantities of food per day, it’s advisable that you give the baby up to 3 tablespoons of dairy products. For meat and the other proteins, you may give the baby up to 4 tablespoons. It’s also advisable that you give no more than half a cup of fruits, vegetables, and cereals.

You should keep a close watch on how much your baby is eating. If they have high food reinforcement, they are likely to develop adiposity and obesity later on in life. Food reinforcement refers to how hard your baby will try to get more food. At this age, you'll notice high food reinforcement through tantrums and crying when you don’t provide the food they’re craving.

How much formula for an 11-month-old baby?

If you cease to breastfeed and instead feed your baby formula, you need to make sure that you provide the baby with the right amount. Note, however, that studies suggest that a shorter duration of breastfeeding can cause greater food reinforcement in infants. This is because when you feed the baby via a bottle, you provide a set volume of formula. In such a case, you might notice the natural cues that indicate the baby is full.

For this reason, you need to control how much formula you give the baby. The recommended amount is around 720 milliliters (ml) of formula per day. Initially, you might have given this amount divided across three meals. However, now that she is on an 11-month-old eating schedule, she can have one big formula feed per day.

Keep in mind, of course, that not all babies are the same therefore need different amounts of formula to be satisfied. To get the correct amount of formula, multiply your baby’s weight in pounds by 2 and 2.5. The ideal daily amount of formula for your little one should fall between the resulting values.

On average, the daily caloric requirements for 11-month-old babies are around 920 kcal/day for boys and around 865 kcal/day for girls.

Sample 11-month-old feeding schedule

In the earlier months, it was easy to feed your baby because the options were quite limited and handy (breast milk mainly). You could even pump and store the milk for impromptu feeds.

With an increasing range of food for 11-month-old babies, you might find it more challenging to provide a complete meal. You also need to be able to fit these meals into a schedule so that your baby is getting the most out of the day.

Here is a sample 11-month-old feeding schedule around which you can model yours:

1. Breakfast

120 ml to 180 ml of breast milk or formula
Quarter to half a cup of mashed boiled egg or cereal
4 ounces of fruit

2. Midmorning snack

120 ml to 180 ml of breast milk, formula, or water
2 ounces of diced cheese

3. Lunch

60 ml to 120 ml of yogurt or quarter to half a cup of meat
Quarter to half a cup of veggies
120 ml to 180 ml of breast milk or formula

4. Afternoon snack

1 teething biscuit or cracker
A quarter cup of diced fruit, if she can feed herself

5. Dinner

120 ml to180 ml of breast milk or formula
2 ounces of poultry or meat
2 to 4 ounces of pasta, rice, or potatoes
A quarter cup of fruit

Before you tuck her in for bedtime, give her an increased amount of breast milk, formula, or water — around 180 ml to 240 ml.

At this stage, your baby generally has a more defined eating routine. Create a schedule that works for both of you so that you can also get time to run errands. The sample menu above should give you a good idea of what the baby's diet should consist of.

Baby 11 months - Friso company website

Speech understanding

The child understands the requests of adults and responds to them with pleasure. He is ready to show parts of the body at himself or at the doll many times in a row, find all the objects and toys that you name. Now, on your instructions, he can perform several related actions in a row: open the cabinet and take out his cup, take soap and wash his hands. Encourage your baby to these actions, because these are the first skills of active cooperation. And, of course, do not forget to praise him.

The same action, if it deserves your approval, the baby is ready to repeat dozens of times. Do not stop him: this is how he improves his skills. If for some reason the game cannot be continued, divert the attention of the baby - at this age, children are ready for a quick change of activity.

Active speech

By 11 months, the child begins to pronounce the first words. So far, these are mostly short onomatopoeias, but the baby puts as much meaning into them as into a whole sentence. For example, with a simple word “um-am”, a child can tell you that he is hungry, hint that you have his favorite treat in your hands and he would like to try it, or talk about how he spoon-feeds a doll.

The baby's speech becomes an important means of communication: with the help of short words and sound combinations, the baby shares with you his desires, observations and experiences. Be sure to answer the crumbs to all his exclamations so that your communication is mutual.

Emotions

The behavior of a child at 11 months is becoming more and more like how adults behave. Children already understand that in the big world around them, not everything is available for research, and they calmly react to the word “no”. But how much effort does the baby make to arouse the approval of the mother! He is very willing to carry out small assignments: find an object, give a toy, put the keys on the table. The kid will be delighted if you instruct him to put the chopped apples for compote in a saucepan and then pick up a suitable lid for it.

Playing with everyday items is very useful for the baby. On the one hand, they expand his horizons, and on the other hand, they give the first skills of behavior in the family.

Communication with the child during this period can be based not only on games, but also rely on sign language. At 11 months, the baby can already learn the simplest gestures: yes - a nod of the head, no - shaking.

The child can apply these skills in communication with other children. So, if on the same site there are children of the same age who still cannot speak, then they express their mutual sympathy with gestures and exclamations. The kid immediately chooses one friend for himself and reaches out to him, and then they study each other with interest. At 11 months, the baby still does not understand how to play with other children, and so far he only watches them from the side and sometimes tries to repeat their actions. However, such an experience is very important for the development of the child's social skills, and gives him the first understanding of the relationship between people outside his family.

Nutrition

A balanced diet will provide the baby with energy for the whole day

At eleven months, the baby's body has become much stronger, and the gastrointestinal tract has formed so much that it can take almost all products. From this age, the baby's diet includes cereals, boiled and raw vegetables, fish, meat, dairy products, bread and fruits. However, there are still two breast milk or formula feedings on the menu. This is best done in the morning and evening.

How to diversify baby's diet?

Soups, steamed, baked or stewed vegetable and meat dishes must be in the daily menu for proper nutrition of 11-month-old children.

Meatballs, steam cutlets or soufflés can be prepared as a meat dish from different types of meat.

Best served with mashed pumpkin, courgette, carrot, broccoli or mixed vegetables and egg yolk omelet.

Greens and raw vegetable salads dressed with yogurt, vegetable oil or cream should be included in the diet.

A delicious and nutritious dessert is cottage cheese pudding, jelly, dried fruit compote with a little sugar, or rosehip infusion.

11 month old baby menu: sample diet

Lyubov Troshina

Daily Baby author, mother of two girls

#nutrition #lure

The time for one-component purees is over. Now mom is free to experiment: there are a lot of products on the list of allowed products that can now be mixed, besides, the baby is already used to a denser consistency of dishes. So, what to feed a baby at 11 months?

What to feed

An 11 month old baby's daily menu ideally includes foods from all major groups of the food pyramid. Namely:

Cereals . The baby can already have buckwheat, rice, corn, oatmeal, wheat and millet porridge. The approximate daily allowance for an eleven-month-old baby is 200 grams.
Vegetables . Zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower and white cabbage, carrots, pumpkin, potatoes, beets, tomatoes, onions. A child can eat about 150 grams of vegetable dishes per day.
Meat and fish . For a baby, it is better to cook rabbit, turkey, chicken and beef. The norm per day is 40-50 grams of meat puree from a boiled product or 80-100 grams of meat “in a jar”. As a meat portion, you can sometimes give dishes from offal: tongue, liver or heart. A couple of times a week it’s good to arrange a “fish day”. A serving of fish now can be 30-60 grams. Among those allowed for baby food: sea - flounder, cod and pollock; river - hake, carp and river perch.
Dairy products . At this age, the child is advised to give no more than 50 grams of cottage cheese. Fermented milk drink - kefir, biokefir, biolact, yogurt - about 200 grams.
Fruit . Among the most friendly to the baby's digestive system are apples, pears, bananas, peaches, apricots, plums, currants (white, black and red). The norm of fruit puree is about 90-100 grams.
Egg . A couple of times a week it is useful to give the baby half a chicken yolk, or a whole quail. Eggs for this should be boiled "hard boiled". A short heat treatment with the “soft-boiled” or “pouched” options does not destroy salmonellosis pathogens.
Oil . Vegetable oil goes well with vegetable dishes. The daily norm for a baby at 11 months is 6 grams. Creamy makes porridge tastier, 5 grams is enough for a child a day.
Cookies . An eleven-month-old baby can be pampered with special baby biscuits. But you should not get carried away - two things a day are enough.

When to feed

It is not always possible to follow a strict regime with babies, but it is worth trying. Children who eat at regular intervals—with a maximum margin of error of 30 minutes—have better appetites and fewer digestion problems.

At 11 months, it is advised to feed the baby five times a day, keeping four hours between meals. Immediately after sleep and at night, the baby still receives breast milk or an adapted milk formula.

A classic breakfast is porridge, cottage cheese, sometimes egg yolk.

Lunch is usually served with vegetables and meat (fish or offal). But the meat portion also goes well with a cereal side dish. Then vegetables can be given for breakfast or dinner.

Fruit puree and any fermented milk drink are also suitable for dinner.

What to drink

Plain water is what a child needs to maintain water balance. You can buy bottled baby water or use boiled tap water. In second place are compotes from berries, fruits or vegetables familiar to the baby. Preferably without sugar.

Fruits and berries that are familiar to babies can also be used to prepare sparse jelly. The drink improves digestion, but since it is very high in calories, it is better not to give it to overweight children.

You should not get carried away with juices, although according to the norms they are allowed to drink 60-80 ml every day. They contain a lot of sugar and this is a disaster for delicate milk teeth. And the juices are rich in organic acids, which irritate the mucous membranes of the gastrointestinal tract.

What not to feed

There are foods on which, in the imagination of parents, there should be a “sign of an outcast”. They are absolutely not allowed in complementary foods. These are any canned foods, pickled vegetables and fruits, smoked meats.

Sausages, wieners and other sausage products should not be given to a child at least until the age of three. The same applies to cakes, pastries, chocolate, glazed curds. These are too "heavy" sweets. If you want to pamper your baby with sweets, then it is better to give him dried fruits, marshmallows or marshmallows.

Milk - cow, goat - for children under one year old will only bring harm. There is a lot of phosphorus in the product, and the kidneys of a child under one year old do not know how to remove it correctly. As a result, along with phosphorus, the baby loses calcium and vitamin D, and this is dangerous for the development of a severe form of rickets.

Honey sometimes contains spores that cause botulism. They are dangerous only for children under one year old.

It is also a mistake to give the baby dishes with mayonnaise, mustard, horseradish, pepper, vinegar and hot sauces.

How to cook

Baby food can be boiled, steamed, baked and stewed. Fried foods are taboo in baby food.

Vegetables and fruits no longer need to be thermally processed. They can be grated and served as a salad.

You can cook meatballs and meatballs from meat. Moreover, at the “sculpting” stage, it is permissible to prepare them for several days at once and put them in the freezer.