Until a certain point, your baby eats exclusively breast milk or infant formula, and his intestines are not yet ready to consume more “adult” food. However, by the age of 4 months, many mothers are thinking about introducing complementary foods. It would seem: the baby has already matured enough, and nothing prevents to begin to accustom him to the products of more adult nutrition. But everything is not so simple, and there are many controversial questions about how to start feeding a baby.
Firstly, pediatricians have not fully decided when and how to introduce complementary foods in the form of mashed potatoes and juices. Some doctors prescribe training from 4 months, but most pediatricians are inclined to introduce complementary foods two months later - six months. If the baby is premature or you constantly observe allergic reactions on his skin - this is an occasion to postpone complementary foods until a later time and visit a pediatric immunologist-allergist who will tell you how to start complementary foods and choose an individual scheme for introducing new food for him.
If the baby is healthy, and the doctor does not see any obstacles to the introduction of complementary foods, then young parents have a wide choice of various tasty and healthy mashed potatoes, juices and cereals, which are in abundance on the shelves of children's stores and pharmacies.
Where to begin
Many questions arise about which mashed potatoes to choose first: vegetable, meat or fruit? On the one hand, the child would have liked the sweet taste of fruit puree, and the body begins to absorb it before the vegetable - at 4 months. However, if vegetable lure is introduced after fruit lure at 6 months, then a problem may arise: the child will be extremely reluctant to perceive the fresh taste of vegetables, accustomed to getting sweet food. That is why it is much more convenient to start complementary foods at exactly 6 months, and it is with vegetable puree.
It is better to consult a pediatrician about how to start feeding a baby with fermented milk products (kefir and cottage cheese), but usually they are administered closer to 9 months when the enzymes necessary for normal digestion are finally matured in the baby. Around the same time, the baby is shown the introduction of meat and mashed fish.
How to introduce porridge to lure
Pediatricians recommend using very liquid rice porridge as the first food product. It is hypoallergenic, and it can be prepared in infant formula or in breast milk. It will be wrong to feed your child liquid porridge from a bottle, because the transition to more solid food is a new stage in the development of your baby: he learns to eat from a spoon, and later will do it himself.
Amount of complementary foods
Now we turn to the question of the amount of introduced complementary foods. Of course, on the first day of new food intake, the dose will be minimal - half a teaspoon. For 1-2 weeks you need to try to accustom the baby to a new taste. But you need to remember that, starting complementary foods, you need to offer your child only one product. It is a mistake to introduce several types of mashed potatoes at the same time. And the point is not only that the child needs to be accustomed to a new taste gradually. The main problem is that if a baby suddenly has an allergic reaction, it will be difficult to determine what exactly it manifested itself on.
If you have already decided how to start feeding your baby, then you need to consider that the position of the baby should be seated - place it on your lap or in the high chair. Get ready for extraordinary patience. The kid will not always eat a new kind of food willingly. Perhaps there will be days when he will abandon him. It is better to respond to such cases as calmly as possible and not to feed the baby through closed lips. Try to offer mashed potatoes after a while, and feeding will certainly get better.