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.
Additional resources
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