9 tips to help make weaning your
baby a little easier

Every baby is different, but these tips might help the transition to
solid food

“Babies can get all the fluid, nutrients and energy they need from
breast milk or first infant formula until they’re about six months old.”
Dr. Santosh N. Madrewar

“After six months traditional solid foods needs to be gradually
introduced to all babies to fulfill their growing demand of nutrients
and energy and prevent nutritional deficiencies and malnutrition”.
Dr. Santosh N. Madrewar

There are signs to suggest your baby might be ready for solid foods. Such as:

• Your baby sits up with support
• Your baby has neck and head control
• Your baby gives you cues
• Your baby loses the thrust instinct and her/his tongue no longer
• pushes out food from the mouth
• Your baby can close lips over a spoon (if using purees)
• Your baby is trying to grab pieces of foods, fingers and bring
• them to the mouth
• Your baby is his/her chewing fist
• Your baby is waking in the night when they have previously slept
• through
• Your baby is wanting extra milk feed

If you think your baby is ready to be weaned, we’ve rounded up
some useful tips to help make moving your baby on to solid foods a
little easier:

1. Try one food at a time
   During the first few weeks of weaning, it can be helpful to give your
   baby just one food at a time. This can help your baby get used to
   new flavours and textures, and can also make it easier to spot if he
   or she has a reaction to any specific food. Mixtures of two or more
   foods can be introduced after a few weeks, ideally after each has
   been eaten on its own.
2. Fruit and vegetables: explained
   Avoid focusing on fruit when weaning your baby. Doing so can
   encourage their taste for sweet foods and make it more difficult to
   introduce vegetables and other savoury foods later on. Vegetables
   that have a mild and slightly sweet taste such as mashed sweet
   potato, carrots or parsnips are a great place to start. They are also
   relatively easy to digest.
   When buying ready-made baby foods, carefully check the
   ingredients list. Vegetable named products often have fruit as the
   main ingredient, so are sweet rather than savoury.
   Fruit and vegetables are an important part of your baby’s diet and
   you shouldn’t worry about the naturally occurring sugar in fruit and
   vegetables, unless they have been processed into juices and
   purees because ‘free sugars’ are released as a result. “These free
   sugars can cause tooth decay”. It is advised that fruit purees only
   make up a small part of your baby’s diet, and encourage less
   processed foods.
3. Go small
   Start with very small portions of food when first weaning your baby
   – even just a couple of teaspoons. His or her digestive system has
   to get used to digesting ‘real’ food, which entails producing more or
   different types of digestive enzymes, as well as changes in their gut
   bacteria. They will gradually be able to cope with more food and
   less milk.
4. Persevere
   If baby doesn’t seem to like a new food at first, persevere. Babies
   are more open to new tastes and textures in their first year of life,
   so try to feed them as many different tastes as you can to get those
   taste buds tingling and broaden their tiny palates. Babies
   sometimes need to try new flavours up to 10-15 times before they
   accept it, so keep trying.
5. Be wary of sugar
   “Foods like rusks, baby biscuits and puddings, often contain a lot of
   sugar so it’s best to avoid them”. Furthermore dried fruits or
   pressed fruit snacks also contain lots of sugar. If you choose to give
   your baby fruit juice, always dilute one part juice to 10 parts water
   and give your baby a free flow beaker or cup to lower their tooth
   decay risk.
6. Introduce family mealtimes
   Try to eat together as much as possible, as your baby will learn
   from the rest of the family. Once your baby has accepted their first
   few mouthfuls, try to get into a routine of offering them solid food at
   the same time each day. The aim of complementary feeding is for
   your little one to transition from solely drinking milk to eating your
   usual family foods, so do try offering smaller mashed-up portions of
   the food that the rest of the family is eating, as long as you haven’t
   added any salt, or sugar, or any other foods that are not suitable for
   babies.
7. Follow your families food culture
   Try to follow your family traditions in cooking, as every house has a
   different manu and different taste. From the beginning use home
   food prepared in traditional ways rather than buying weaning foods
   from the stores which has totally a different taste and flavour than
   your family. once your baby gets used toa particular taste he/she
   demands the same year after year, its not only a economical loss
   but consumes lot of family time in preparing everytime a different
   meal for the baby which otherwise should be a part of your cooking
   by the time baby gets 8 months old.
8. Follow your baby’s lead
   Remember that every baby is different. Don’t worry about how
   much they’re eating at the beginning, as it’s more important for your
   little one to get used to experiencing different flavours and textures.
   Allow plenty of time for eating, and go along with your baby’s pace.
   Your baby may want to feed themselves, usually with their hands,
   or be happy to hold a spoon themselves whilst you spoon-feed her.
   Anything goes at this stage, so just follow your baby’s lead. If your
   baby isn’t interested, leave it and try again another day.
9. Follow your baby’s hunger times
   Remember food tastes better when there is fire in the
   stomach.Allow the baby to be hungry so that his all digestive juices
   and saliva is ready to digest the food. Every person has
   a emptying time for his stomach (hunger time), baby’s usually are
   hungry after 3-4 hours of first full meal. Allow the first meal to digest
   properly and baby to be hungry. If baby is not hungry
   then don’t feed, its not at all necessary to run behind a baby to
   feed, and that’s not a good habit too.
   “Avoid readymade packed, canned and formula feeds. Food is
   medium to transfer your love to your baby. You become what you
   eat. So be careful what you choose to feed to your baby.”
   

Dr. Santosh N. Madrewar
Nimai Hospitals
Aurangabad.