Weaning stage 2
If your baby is accepting gentle tastes and smooth textures quite easily, you can try moving them on to the next stage of weaning, by introducing more adventurous tastes and mashed textures.
A nutritionally balanced weaning diet
Since no single food can give your baby all the nutrients they need, you'll need to offer them a good variety of foods. This will help to ensure that they get the right balance of vitamins and minerals, as well as the energy they need for all that growing and exploring.
At this stage, it's especially important to make sure their food and milk contains a healthy amount of iron, as the natural stores they were born with begin to run low after about 6 months.
Try starting their day with a breakfast cereal fortified with key vitamins and minerals, but with no added sugar or salt. As well as delicious porridge, babies aged 7+ months can try Aptamil Multigrain Breakfast to start their day. Remember to include lots of different vegetables in their main meal, and fruit for dessert. Babies of this age are generally willing to try new flavours, so it's a great time to introduce foods such as aubergine, mushrooms and pineapple.
Although they may be eating more and more each day, milk is still an important part of your baby's diet. They need around 500–600ml (about a pint) a day – this includes any milk you use to make their food.
The right texture
This second stage of weaning involves learning how to chew. This is done by progressing from smooth purées to mashed textures, which encourage your baby to start moving their jaws up and down. Once they have got the hang of this, they'll be ready for bigger lumps and pieces.
Your baby's coordination may also be improving, so try introducing them to finger foods and the fun of feeding themselves. Small pieces of cooked, mixed vegetables and little cubes of fruit are ideal to start with.
The right tastes
Since this is a stage when they are open to trying new tastes, it's important to offer your baby a wide variety of healthy foods to help them learn to love different flavours. From the age of two, these preferences may become relatively fixed until they're around eight years old, so introducing more foods now will help prevent them from becoming a fussy eater.
Call on our expertise
If you have a query about introducing new foods to your baby's diet, our expert healthcare professionals and experienced mums are here to help. Simply give us a call on 0800 996 1000 anytime.
really took a lot from this video, even though i'm a 2nd time mum, there is a 6 year gap between my children and everything seems to have been wiped from my memory from 1st time round. I find that people expect me to know what to do and when to do it, because i've done it all before. This has really jogged my memory and helped me keep in touch with what my baby should be doing at 7 months old :-)
26 May 2011 11:29