Weaning your baby: 7+ months
Ready for the next stage of weaning.
Once your baby has mastered the first stage of weaning and is happily accepting simple puréed tastes, they’ll be ready to explore a wider variety of flavours with lumpier textures.
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.
Try our Aptacreal range of flavours; 5 fruits and with vanilla. Fruits are perfect as a morning meal for babies, they provide them with vitamins and minerals and are important for their vitality.
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.
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 Careline team is here to help. Simply give us a call on 009647723342222 between the hours of 9am and 5pm Saturday to Thursday.
