How often and how much food in stage 2?
- By now your baby should be eating 3 times a day, at breakfast, lunch and teatime
- They will also have increased the amount they are eating at each meal and you should now start offering food before milk and avoid giving a milk feed too close to a solid feed to avoid ruining their appetite
- You may find that the times of milk feeds need to change to fit in with mealtimes
- You may find that your baby drinks less milk and drops a milk feed. This is fine, as you are gradually moving towards a diet which is more solids than milk-based. Remember though, that for the first year of life, your baby still needs 500-600 ml (about a pint) of breast, infant or follow-on milk a day
- You can start to make meal times 2 courses by including a pudding. Try to aim for one milk-based pudding e.g. yoghurt, rice pudding etc, and one fruit-based pudding a day
What sort of foods should they be eating now?
- Your baby should now be eating a good variety of foods
- Try to offer new foods as often as possible and try lots of different recipes
- This is a period of rapid development for your baby and you need to ensure they are getting plenty of calories and nutrients from a healthy balanced diet. Try and aim for:
- 2-3 servings of carbohydrate foods a day
- 1-2 servings of meat or meat alternatives a day
- 2-3 servings of fruit and vegetables a day
This is in addition to 500 - 600ml of their usual milk or breastfeeds. You can also introduce full fat dairy foods such as yoghurt and cheese at this stage
What about texture from 7 months?
Your baby will be ready to start experimenting with chewing and may even have a few teeth. Don’t worry though if they haven’t, as they can use their gums very effectively instead!
To start them off on the road to learning to chew you need to stop pureeing all their foods and make the texture a bit lumpier. This can easily be done by mashing foods instead of pureeing
Foods that tend to work particularly well for introducing new texture sensations at this stage include:
- Grated fruits and cooked vegetables
Feeding themselves and finger foods
By now your baby will be able to hold things well in their hand and transfer things from one hand to the other. They will be keen to start experimenting with feeding themselves and this should be encouraged
- Let your baby have a spoon and try feeding themselves
- Continue to help them to make sure that enough is actually going in their mouth
- You may find you need to put more food in your baby’s bowl at this stage to allow for some to end up on the floor rather than in their mouth!
- Start to give your baby pieces of foods that they can easily hold in their hands and feed themselves with (finger foods)
- Never leave your baby alone during feeding
Good finger foods include:
- Softly cooked vegetables, such as broccoli spears
- Rice cakes
- Bread sticks
- Toast fingers
- Slivers of ripe fruit such as banana and pear
- Raspberries make a great introduction to texture and finger foods as they squash down easily as well as tasting nice and sweet