Getting started with solids
The introduction to solid foods is an exciting milestone for parents. There’s a whole sensory world of flavors and textures for babies to explore. Observing your baby develop a palate. accepting (and rejecting) different foods during this transition is a rewarding, frustrating, and sometimes hilarious experience.
Tips for a successful introduction to solid foods
Before we talk about food for your baby, there’s one important thing to address: You. It’s true! Parents are incredibly important in this process, especially because things can get pretty emotional, pretty quickly, once you start getting into this phase. Here are a few things to keep in mind, when you feed your baby:
- Be the boss-ish (but know your role): Parents control what, when, where, and how food is offered to their babies. That’s it. Your baby controls what (and if) they eat—and how much1.
- Stay calm: Things are going to get messy in more than one way. You know that stereotypical stage when babies throw things from their high chairs? It’s a real thing. Stay calm, and smile no matter what happens at mealtime.
- Keep trying: Things may change from day to day (or week to week), in terms of your baby’s food preferences. Your little one might love pureed carrots one day but reject them the next. This is normal. Babies may need to be introduced to food an average of 10 times before their taste buds acclimate to the particular food. And don’t panic on days when your child doesn’t seem to want much food—or doesn’t seem interested in something new. Sometimes it’s appropriate to back off.
- Be neutral: Babies can eat intuitively, making good dietary choices for themselves among their options. Aim to create an environment with no pressure to eat; forcing a baby to eat can backfire.
“Some days babies have bigger appetites than others, so never force them to eat. Babies can start rejecting all foods, if they are forced to eat—it’s called feeding aversion,” Dr. Panchal says.
Your language matters, too. Try not to label a food good or bad, or healthy or unhealthy—this attaches shame and other negative emotions to food. Food is just food. And at this stage, milk is still meeting almost all of babies’ nutritional needs; introducing solids is less about nutrition than about eating skills (and exploring senses).
The science behind your baby’s palate
You may have heard from your pediatrician or friends that exposing babies to 100 different foods before their first birthday is an ideal approach. That’s because from 6 months to about 16 months, you have an open window, developmentally speaking, to influence your baby’s food preferences—and this is especially true before 12 months.
Because your baby will likely be receptive to myriad food choices during this time frame, it’s a great opportunity to introduce as many textures and flavors as you can, prepared in as many ways as possible. This is a proven strategy to reduce picky eating later in life2.
When babies are just getting started with solid foods, they’re likely to love everything they’re offered. Parents can take advantage of this, helping to hardwire their children’s brains to register foods later in life. Translation: A baby who is fed a Brussels sprouts puree is more likely to like Brussels sprouts at ages 2, 12, and 22.
Crossing 100 foods off your baby food list sounds like a daunting task—and yet another thing to add to your laundry list of parenting to-dos. But the number doesn’t matter. Simply try to serve a variety of foods, and then boost exposure by serving the same food prepared in many different ways. You’re creating food memories!
When your baby is first starting out, try pureed carrots, for example, then try mixing the puree with other fruits, veggies, or spices. Finally, when your baby is ready for pieces of food at around 8 or 9 months of age instead of puree, try steaming or roasting carrots, and cutting them into smaller pieces. No matter the size or raw consistency of the food, just ensure that it is served soft enough that it isn’t a choking hazard, Dr. Panchal advises.
At about month 10, babies start developing their own preferences and won’t be as interested in trying new foods. You’ll notice that it will be harder for you to introduce new foods. But don’t lose heart: This is likely a phase, and it’s entirely possible that your baby will come back around to foods previously accepted. Keep experimenting and offering.
That said, this end-of-infancy development is a good reason to take advantage of your baby’s earliest solids-eating months to easily introduce new foods. The less mealtime drama down the road, the better.
Your baby needs a balance of macro- and micronutrients–-fat, carbohydrates, and protein, along with vitamins, minerals, and so forth—from solid food during every meal.
When—and how often—to feed solids
By the time your baby is 6 to 7 months old, aim to be offering solids one or two times per day. The number of daytime breast or bottle feeds will stay the same with the introduction of solid foods, because the majority of your baby’s nutrition will still come from breast milk or formula, and your baby will initially eat only a tablespoon or so of solid foods.
At this point, your baby may no longer require nighttime feeds3, but to maintain your breast milk supply, you might find that you need to continue breastfeeding or pumping at night. If you and your baby want to continue breastfeeding at night, that’s more than OK!
How often and when you should feed your baby solids depends on what works for you. However, we recommend that you offer solid foods 30 minutes after breast or bottle feeding, and at least two hours before bedtime. Let’s take a look at a few sample days.
If you’re back at work (and breastfeeding/pumping):
- 6:30 a.m. breastfeed
- 9:30 a.m. bottle (mom pumps at work)
- 12:30 p.m. bottle (mom pumps at work)
- 3:30 p.m. bottle (mom pumps at work)
- 4:30 p.m. puree of avocado and breast milk
- 5:30 p.m. breastfeed
- 9:30 p.m. breastfeed
- 12:30 a.m. breastfeed (optional/if needed)
- 3:30 a.m. breastfeed (optional/if needed)
If you’re home with your baby:
- 5 a.m. breastfeed
- 8 a.m. breastfeed
- 11 a.m. breastfeed
- 11:30 a.m. piece of banana rolled in baby cereal
- 12 p.m. breastfeed
- 3 p.m. breastfeed
- 6 a.m. breastfeed
- 9:30 p.m. bottle (mom pumps before bed)
- 1 a.m. breastfeed (optional/if needed)
If home with your baby, and your child is ready for 2 daily meals:
- 6:30 a.m. breastfeed
- 9:30 a.m. breastfeed
- 10 a.m. soft omelet strips
- 12:30 p.m. breastfeed
- 3:30 p.m. breastfeed
- 4:30 p.m. steamed carrot sticks
- 7 p.m. breastfeed
- 11 p.m. breastfeed
- 2 a.m. breastfeed (optional/if needed)
How much solid food your baby should eat
As we mentioned above, babies still get most of their nutrition from breast milk or formula when starting to eat solids, so you won’t need to feed them more than a tablespoon or two at first. The general recommendation is to offer two tablespoons per food group (vegetables and fruit, grains, dairy, and proteins) per year of age per meal.
This will help you plan what you need to buy or make, and avoid wasting food. But know, too, that some days babies might eat less than usual—or more of one food group than another. This is normal; don’t stress about what your child is eating each day: Just offer a good nutritional balance at each meal, think about it on a weekly basis, and trust your child’s eating intuition.
Feeding your baby safely
Food should be pureed or soft for babies between 6 and 7 months. The goal is to be able to mash the food easily with your tongue and to avoid choking. You’ll want to either puree it, or serve pieces of food in a couple ways: larger than babies can fit into their mouths, or in strips the size of an adult index finger that are soft and therefore not a choking hazard. Babies and toddlers are more at risk to choke than older kids because their chewing skills are not yet fully developed, and they do not know how to clear their throats or cough on command4.
Is my baby choking or gagging?
Babies often gag when they are learning how to eat. It can look like choking and freak you out a bit, but here’s how it works.
A baby’s gag reflex starts in the middle of the tongue, and as they grow older, it starts to move toward the back of the tongue. This effectively means that as babies gain more experience with eating solid foods, they become less likely to gag.
- Gagging: Your baby’s face might turn red, as the tongue thrusts forward, and you will likely hear a gagging sound. Try not to intervene, as this could make things worse (develop into choking), Dr. Panchal says. Lower yourself so your baby is looking down at you, and with a calm voice, encourage your baby to spit out the stuck food.
- Choking: Your baby’s face might turn blue, and although your baby will have an ineffective cough, you might not hear anything. Choking requires immediate intervention: If in the United States, call 911 immediately, and emergency personnel will tell you what to do.
Feeding solids adds new complexity to parenthood, but there’s no need to put too much pressure on yourself.
Tips for introducing your baby to solid foods
Dr. Panchal
Pediatrician
Fostering your baby’s transition from milk to solid foods (and water) shouldn’t be painful. Here are some practical tips, tricks, and strategies.
Keep in mind that almost all of your baby’s nutrition at this stage will still be coming from breast milk or formula, so try not to excessively fixate on what kinds of foods your baby is (or isn’t) eating. When your infant starts eating solids, start with one practice “meal” per day, typically at least a half an hour after a bottle or breastfeeding session. By the time of your little one’s first birthday, aim to be serving three meals and two or three snacks each day.
You can also simplify matters—and continue to take pressure off yourself—by feeding your baby what you’re eating.
“Make the meals you are preparing for yourself and your family baby-friendly, in terms of appropriate texture, size, and shape,” Dr. Panchal says. You’ll want to puree what you’re eating or, if steamed or roasted, ensure that the foods you serve your baby are soft and no larger than an adult index finger. “The main advantage of having babies eat the same foods as the parents is that it gets them ready for family meals, where everyone is eating the same foods,” she says. Read: No separate meal prep!
Each day, try a different focus among iron-rich foods, high-fat foods, and fruits and vegetables. Some foods naturally qualify for multiple categories. (An avocado, for example, contains fiber and healthy fat, while steak contains fat and iron.) By 7 months old, your baby should be eating combinations of at least a couple different types of foods during every meal.
In these early months of introducing your baby to solids, you can—and should—have fun with it. As you get into a groove, you can make modifications in how you serve them. Here are a few ideas to try at the start:
- Add ¼ to ½ teaspoon of one spice to a meal or puree, such as cinnamon, ginger, garlic, or turmeric.
- Try preparing ingredients in different ways: roasting to steaming, purees to finger-size wedges.
- Use different fat sources (unsalted butter, ghee, coconut oil, olive oil).
- Start combining foods your baby clearly likes with ingredients new to your baby (a seasonal vegetable, for example, or quinoa).
- Roll slices of banana or avocado into baby cereal, ground flaxseed, or hemp seeds.
After about a month or so, you can get even more creative with combining foods. For example:
- Chia pudding with chia seeds, almond milk, almond butter, and banana
- Smoothie with spinach, strawberry, oat milk, and a scoop of baby cereal
- Smashed lentils with chicken stock and sweet potatoes
- Plain whole-milk yogurt with smashed peaches and hemp seed “sprinkles”
- Avocado toast cut into strips
- Plain whole milk or Greek yogurt mixed with nut butter
This may come as a surprise, but the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that you don’t wait to introduce your baby to common food allergens like peanuts and eggs. These nine foods fall into that category. Once you’ve safely introduced a food to your child, try to keep these nine foods in your baby’s solid-foods rotation:
- Dairy, such as cheese and yogurt
- Eggs
- Fish
- Shellfish
- Tree nuts
- Peanuts
- Wheat
- Soy
- Sesame
What this means, practically speaking, is that you want to just give your baby a little taste of one new food at a time. This way, if there is an allergic reaction, you know which food was the culprit. After that initial introduction, provided that it didn’t provoke a reaction, keep the food in the rotation, offering it once a week or so.
Once your baby is eating solids, the color of your baby’s stool can look tan, yellow, brown, or green, and still be normal. It will probably smell different, too. Keep an eye out for a consistency like that of toothpaste or soft molding clay, and you can give your baby water, too, to help prevent constipation. Also, you may start to notice fewer bowel movements, but that’s OK. Consistency is more important than frequency.
References
1 https://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/how-to-feed/the-division-of-responsibility-in-feeding/
2 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6173797/
3 https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/baby/sleep/Pages/Sleeping-Through-the-Night.aspx
4 https://www.nutritioncaremanual.org/topic.cfm?ncm_category_id=12&lv1=144610&lv2=145010&lv3=270353&ncm_toc_id=270353&ncm_heading=Normal%20Nutrition
Additional resources
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