When to add supplementary food?
Generally speaking, supplementary foods should be added after 4-6 months.
Tip: The 4th-6th month is a period for babies to adapt to supplementary food. Mothers do not need to force the baby’s food intake. Encouraging the baby to be interested in eating is the first goal to be achieved.
In addition to the age of the baby, there are the following points that can be used to determine whether the baby needs to add supplementary food:
Weight: The baby weighs 2 times the weight of birth. (The female baby is not less than 5 kg, the male baby is not less than 6 kg).
Milk intake: For breast-fed babies, the number of feeding increases obviously; for formula-fed babies, the number of feeding is as usual, but babies still cry and want to eat.
Physical development: Babies can control their upper body. They can show whether they want to eat food by turning their heads, leaning forward and leaning backward.
Behavior: When the baby has behavior like grabbing the parents’ rice, bowls, and chopsticks, it shows that the baby is interested in eating.
How to add supplementary food?
1) From one to many
Mothers should gradually increase the variety of foods according to their baby’s nutritional needs and digestive capacity. When the baby reaches 4 months, the best starting supplement should be infant nutritional rice flour, which has strengthened calcium, iron, zinc, and other nutrients, so as to ensure the nutritional balance of the baby, while not overloading the gastrointestinal tract.
When the baby reaches 6 months, we can add some vegetable puree properly, and then start adding yolk, meat puree, and other foods after 7-8 months.
2) From thin to thick
When the supplementary food was added, the baby has not grown teeth yet, so the mother could only feed the baby liquid food, such as rice flour, rice pasta, vegetables or fruit paste, and so on. With the growth of the baby’s teeth, mothers gradually add semi-liquid food, and finally solid food.
3) From small to big
Adding supplementary food to babies over 4 months not only supplements nutrients but also exercises their swallowing ability. When the baby is older, the masseter muscles are well developed and the molars grow, the mothers can gradually add solid food, such as soft rice, noodles, baby bread, etc. Mothers can also deliberately make the food particles larger, which is conducive to exercise the baby’s chewing ability.
4) From less to more
Each supplementary feeding should be scheduled before two breast milk or formula feeding. Let baby eat supplementary food first, then drink milk. Make the baby full at once, avoid eating less for more meals, because eating less for more meals will not only affect the baby’s interest in eating but also affect digestion. The rule of supplementary feeding is twice a day. With the growth of the baby’s age, the number of supplementary feeding increases gradually.
Tip: Every time you add a new kind of food, you need to let your baby adapt for 3-4 days. If your baby’s digestion is good and defecation is normal, then let your baby try another kind of food. Never add several kinds in a short time.
Rules for adding supplementary food
Ø Don’t be too early or too late
The digestive organs of newborn babies are delicate, the digestive glands are underdeveloped, and many digestive enzymes have not yet formed. If supplementary food is added prematurely, it will increase the burden of the digestive function of babies, and easily make babies abdominal distension, constipation, and anorexia.
Of course, it is not recommended that you add supplementary food too late. Babies can’t get enough nutrients from breast milk after 6 months, so if the supplementary food has not been added in time, it will not only affect the growth and development of the baby but also lead to illness due to lack of resistance. So, parents must remember to add supplementary food to their babies at the right time.
Ø Choose an appropriate amount of food, coarse and fine blending
Although the baby can eat supplementary food, the digestive organs are still very delicate, so mothers can’t let the baby eat whatever he wants without quantitative restriction, which will cause nutritional imbalance and develop bad habits such as baby’s preference and the pickiness of food. So when mothers prepare supplementary food for their babies, they should pay attention to the combination of meat, fish and vegetables, thick and thin food, so that babies’ chewing function can be exercised properly.
Some babies will use their tongues to push food out when they are not used to chewing or do not like to eat certain foods. Moms needn’t worried about this. It is better to show their babies how to chew food and swallow it. In this way, babies may feel: “Mother likes to eat this, baby likes, too.” It’s easy to make your baby like eating supplementary food.
