Early days
Babies may try solid foods from around six months of age. Introducing them too early, before four months, may cause food allergies in your child. Leave it after six months and your baby won’t be getting enough sustenance from breast milk or formula alone.
Many experts recommend that a baby’s first food should be a taste of rice cereal mixed with a little cool boiled water, formula or expressed breast milk. Stir together until it’s quite runny. If it’s too thick, your bub might reject it, as their palate has only tasted liquids at this stage. Offer half a teaspoon after your baby’s lunch-time milk feed, then offer a little more each day, increasing to a few teaspoons over a few days.
What next?
Once your baby is used to cereal, try offering a small amount of warm pureed vegetable, such as carrot, sweet potato or pumpkin. One tip is to freeze the puree into ice cubes and store them in the freezer, defrosting before each meal. Many experts also recommend introducing pureed vegetables before fruit, as babies already have a sweet palate, which was formed from drinking breast milk and formula. Pureed pear, apple or peach are good first fruits to try.
Remember!
Be sure to only introduce one new food every few days to check your baby doesn’t have a reaction to it.
Try and try again
Offer the same new food for a few days, even if your baby turns it down at first. Research shows that babies often need to try a new food 10 times before they will accept it.
