Home made baby food using natural ingredients is best for babies. It is recommended that you use fresh lightly cooked food and make into puree when you start to feed your baby with his/her first solid food.

4-6 months

For a start, do introduce one new food at a time to your baby in order to track any possible allergy causing ingredient that may affect your baby. If you can, it is best to prepare your baby food every time before the actual feed to ensure freshness and maximum vitamins. You can boil an apple and make it into puree daily and feed your baby this new item for a few days. You should not add any seasoning to your baby’s food at all. For the next few days, you may make banana puree, then pear puree, and so on. As you gradually introduce new food to your baby, he or she will slowly get accustomed to solid food. Remember to feed your baby one or two sip of plain water after food to rinse off any food sugar that may accumulate on your baby’s gums (which is bad for the baby’s teeth).

6-9 months

A baby can start to take solid food at around 6 months old. You may double boil (takes about 1-2 hours) some white rice with a little minced brown rice into porridge, together with a spoonful of minced carrot and some fine boneless fish flakes (Can use Thread fin or Cod fish). Place a slice of lean pork in the water to serve as a soup base for the porridge, this piece of meat is to be discarded after the porridge is done. It is mainly used for added natural taste in the porridge and to boost the protein level. Other great sources for soup base are chicken meat (use breast meat), soya beans or ikan bilis. You may add pureed vegetables (spinach or broccoli) in place of carrots and a soft boiled egg yolk in place of fish. Another great food is grated cheese added to milk. At the end of this period, your objective would be to gradually replace milk feed with solid food until your baby has 3 main meals a day with milk feed during the morning and night before retiring to bed.

9-18 months

At about this age, your baby will start to have several upper and lower teeth. After the age of 16 months, it is not necessary to mince the food. However, you still need to cut up the meat to small bitable chunks. You may wish to decorate the food to make it interesting to your baby/toddler. You do not need to do complicated recipes for your baby. What is important is to cook simply and healthily with minimum seasoning. For breakfast, you may prepare a small piece of bread with a little butter or boil and mash a potato. For lunch, you may cook some sliced chicken macaroni soup with a dash of salt. Squeeze a small cup of orange juice to go with the food. For dinner, you may bake some fish and serve it with baked beans as main course. For dessert, you can cut a piece of fresh fruit, for instance, a piece of papaya. Just think out of the box and you will be able to come up with variety in baby recipes daily.

Get your baby into the habit of drinking plain water, eating vegetables and fruits besides fish, chicken and red meat. Having a balanced and nutritious diet is important for the physical and mental growth and development of babies.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]