Have you been wondering how to start the process of introducing your baby to
solids? In this video I’m going to talk about what foods to start with, the portion sizes,
and how many days to wait between new food introductions. This information is applicable
regardless of whether you’re planning to do baby-led weaning or spoon feeding purées.
If this is our first time meeting, I’m Dr. Belousov. I’m a board certified pediatrician
and I equip parents with knowledge, so they can care for their children with confidence.
I put together this Youtube video series to show you how simple and enjoyable the
process of introducing solids can be for you and your baby. Be on the lookout for more videos
like this released on a weekly basis. Hit the subscribe button and ring the bell so you get
notified when the newest video is released. First let’s talk about what foods to start
with. In the beginning of the food introduction process, we want to give single ingredient foods
to see how the baby will do, and watch for potential reactions. The most common foods
parents start with are avocado, sweet potato, carrots or banana. That's right, you don't have
to start your baby off with rice cereal. It really doesn’t matter which of the single ingredient
foods you start with, as long as you prepare and offer it in a way that’s safe for your baby.
Of course foods like avocado and banana will not need to be cooked, but hard vegetables and
fruits like apples, will need to be softened. You may have heard that giving fruits before
vegetables can cause the baby to prefer sweets, but there’s no research that supports this.
The more important thing is that you’re introducing a wide variety of foods to your baby
from the different food groups, which include: vegetables, fruits, carbohydrates, proteins and
the allergenic foods. Babies who eat a broad range of foods, experience more of the different tastes,
smells, and textures, increasing the likelihood that they will be open to trying new foods as
they get older. In addition research suggests that early introduction of the common allergenic foods,
is very likely to decrease the baby’s risk of developing allergy to these foods.
The common allergenic foods include milk, peanut, egg, fish, soy, tree nut, wheat and shellfish.
As adults we may have a tendency to eat the same foods for breakfast,
and may have a small range of favorite dishes that we eat every week. We can still be getting
all the necessary nutrients from our diet. But when it comes to introducing your baby to
solids, this approach isn’t recommended. We find that children who didn’t get exposed to a wide
variety of foods as babies, tend to have a limited number of foods that they are willing to take,
especially as toddlers. In general before 14 to 18 months of age, most children are
much more open to trying new foods and eat a greater variety. After that most toddlers go
through a phase of being more particular about their food, and start limiting their diet.
Now let’s talk about portion sizes. Most parents want to know how much food
they should be giving their baby when starting solids. Believe it or not,
there are actually no portion size guidelines. The reason being that all babies are unique and will
have their own individual journey of how slowly or quickly they take to solids. This is why it’s so
important for you to learn to pay attention to the baby’s cues to know when they’re finished.
I realize that most parents want to know the portion sizes,
so they can have a realistic expectation for how much their baby will be taking.
So let me tell you what the process of starting solids looks like realistically
for most babies. If you will be doing the spoon feeding purees approach, the first several weeks
your baby will probably spit most of the puree out, and will probably only be open to taking
a few teaspoons before turning away from the spoon or refusing to open the mouth to take more.
If you will be doing the baby-led weaning approach, and offering your baby soft strips
of food, you can expect that most of the food will end up smeared on the baby’s face, hands and bib.
This is all normal and part of the process that your baby needs to go through to explore and
become familiar with taking solids. Just like your baby went through a process to learn other
developmental skill sets, like rolling over and sitting, becoming proficient at eating
foods is also a gradual learning experience. The thing that really helps parents keep it in
perspective, is knowing that in the beginning food is just complementary to the breastmilk
or formula that the baby is already taking, not a replacement. Around 6 months most babies are
taking around 28 to 32 ounces of breastmilk or formula per day broken up into 4 to 6 feedings.
This will continue to be the case in the first several months of starting solids.
So take the pressure off of your baby and yourself, and don’t set an expectation for
your child to be taking a certain amount of solids during the meal. Remember babies need to figure
out how to eat and safely swallow food before they can start increasing the amount of food they eat.
Your goal is to gradually transition your baby from an all liquid diet to a predominantly solid
food diet with 2 to 3 milk feeds by the time the baby turns 1. Your baby has many months to make
this transition. From my experience, most babies really start getting the hang of taking solids
around 8 to 9 months. But even at that age, we expect the baby will be taking only about 6 to 12
teaspoons of food per meal. So be patient and let your baby be the one leading the feeding process.
I also want you to be aware that each day of taking solids is going to look different.
One day your baby might be showing an interest in food and willing to take more bites,
and other days whether it’s because of teething, or something else, your baby will be uninterested
in food. There is nothing wrong with your child, this is all part of the journey. Your job is
to offer the food, and it's up to your baby how little or how much she is going to take.
Let me know that you’re finding this information helpful by hitting the thumbs up button.
Now let's talk about how many days you should wait between introducing new foods. Most likely
you were told by your child’s healthcare provider to wait anywhere from 2 to 5 days.
However there is absolutely no research to suggest that it’s necessary to wait that long between
introducing foods that are low risk for allergy. The main reason to give a single ingredient food
when giving it for the first time, is to see if the baby has an allergic reaction. If we offer
multiple foods for the first time in the same meal, in the event that the baby has a reaction,
it will be hard to figure out which food was the culprit. So when giving a new food to your baby,
it does make sense to offer only one new food that day. An allergic reaction to a food will
typically occur minutes to a few hours after eating that food. Fortunately it’s rare for a
baby to have an allergic reaction to most foods that are not the typical allergenic foods.
The concern with waiting 2 to 5 days between introducing new foods is that it significantly
limits the number of flavors and textures that your baby will get to experience before
the picky toddler phase begins. Waiting many days between food introductions also tends to put off
the early exposure to the common allergenic foods. So to make it possible for you to expose your baby
to a wide variety of foods, I recommend in a given week to introduce a new vegetable on one day,
a new fruit another day, a new protein food another day, a new carbohydrate food separate day,
and then to be more cautious give one new allergenic food the final three days of that week.
And then repeat that same approach the following week with new foods. In next week's video I’m
going to walk through an example of what week 1 of starting solids could look like for your baby.
It will be linked up here once it’s released. From my own experience, I’ve had parents who
followed this approach. Their babies were exposed to around 100 new foods by their first birthday,
compared to the 20 to 30 foods that babies were exposed to when parents waited 2 to 5 days
between food introductions. It’s to your baby’s benefit to be exposed to a wide variety of foods.
The likelihood of being a picky eater is lower in children who are exposed to more flavors
and textures. And also it’s incredible to know that you can actually lower your child’s risk
of developing an allergy to the common allergenic foods simply by introducing them into your child’s
diet and continuing to reintroduce them at as early as 6 months. I will be creating separate
videos to guide you through the process of how to safely introduce all the allergenic foods.
So be on the lookout for those. See you in the next video.