The introduction of solid food into your baby’s diet is an important milestone and can be fun. Watching your baby open her mouth and take food on a spoon makes her look like she is growing up! To make this transition easier, babysitter suggest starting with one tablespoon of rice cereal mixed with four to five tablespoons of breast milk or formula. At first, your baby will probably push the food back out with her tongue. This is normal.
Feed your baby one serving of rice cereal a day until she begins to master the concept of swallowing solid food. You should continue your normal schedule of breast or bottle feeding. After several days, if your baby is learning and eating well, then consider increasing the volume to two to three tablespoons of rice cereal three times a day and increase the consistency so that the cereal slowly gets thicker. Babysitters experience that it takes anywhere from two to eight weeks before your baby is successfully eating cereal three times a day. Be patient. Your baby will learn at her own pace.
After two weeks of eating cereal three times a day, you may introduce strained or mashed vegetables. Start with yellow or orange vegetables, such as squash, sweet potatoes, and carrots. Introduce only one vegetable every few days. This allows you to identify any vegetables that cause an allergic reaction. Next, you can add various green vegetables. You may wish to introduce in the following order: squash, carrots, sweet potatoes, peas and then green beans. Once all the vegetables and fruits are introduced, experts recommend feeding vegetables for three weeks before introducing any fruits. The risk of introducing fruits first is that it could lead to a preference of fruits over vegetables.
If your child suffered from colic, you may want to delay introducing apples or fruit mixes that contain apples or apple juice. A recent study showed that babies who suffered from colic became very fussy when given apple juice.
Don’t let your food preferences limit what you offer your baby. The more foods your baby is exposed to while she is young, the more foods she will like as she gets older.
NannySOS is a confinement agency providing confinement care with a team of experienced babysitters in Singapore. More information is available in our article Babysitter Singapore.