How to Introduce Solids to Baby | Can I give Juice, Water & Dal ka Paani for Babies?
How to Introduce Solids to Baby | Can I give Juice, Water & Dal ka Paani for Babies?
How to Introduce Solids to Baby | Can I give Juice, Water & Dal ka Paani for Babies?
You must be reaching another milestone in your parenting journey when you think of introducing solids. Congratulations parents for successfully reaching here!! In my previous article, I had talked about the basics of When to Introduce Solids, and I recommend you have a look at that article before we jump into the How to Introduce Solids to Baby article.
I’ve noted few very important aspects of introducing solids, including some which can be controversial and are frankly misguided for the profit of many. Please don’t miss to have a look until the end of this article to know more about it.
How to Introduce Solids to Baby | Can I give Juice, Water & Dal ka Paani for Babies?
Choose to cook Homemade Food
- Apart from occasions when you are out and cannot cook, it’s always ideal to serve homemade freshly cooked food for babies.
- This way you will know the texture, amount, and nutrition required to be offered.
- This also helps your baby start his solid foods journey without having processed food with chemicals and preservatives.
Check here for Organic Baby Foods without preservatives, additives, or milk solids.
Few pointers when you Introduce Solids to Baby
• Start with fruits and vegetable purees and slowly move to porridges, finger foods, and regular family foods.
• Test the temperature of the baby food before you offer, its good to serve food warm.
• Use a high chair, booster chair or make the baby SIT in a comfortable position.
• Stop when your baby shows signs of being full.
• Use sterilized utensils only.
• It’s good to introduce new foods in the morning to check if any allergy symptoms.
• No cooking with formula milk.
• Read about Foods to be avoided till a year.
Guideline for Baby Food transition in the first year
• Pureed food to begin with at 6 months.
• Increase the amount of food given gradually.
• Introduce the new texture of the food every 3-4 weeks.
• By 7 months, the baby should start mashed foods with texture.
• By 8 months, the baby should start finger foods with a combination of mashed foods.
• By 9 months, the baby should be allowed to eat finger foods completely, and no more mashed foods.
• By 10 months, the baby should be started on all family food minus salt, sugar and with less spice.
• By 12 months, the baby should start having all family food with less spice and a little salt if required.
Can I give Juice for Babies?
• Feed only 100 to 120 ml of Juice to your baby occasionally.
• Do not feed juice from a bottle but from a cup and only along with a meal and not throughout the day.
• Intake of juices can interfere in breastmilk consumption of your baby, missing on its nutrition.
• Drinking too much juice can lead to dental problems and obesity.
• Offering fresh soft fruits like banana, chikoo, apple, orange is ideal.
Can I give Dal ka Pani or Rice Water for Babies?
• These have no carbs, protein, or fats required for babies, which are ideally required when solid is introduced.
• The vitamins present are negligible too.
• It suggested giving Mashed or Pureed cooked dal and Homemade Rice Cereal in the form of porridge.
• This can also interfere with the baby’s breastmilk intake which is the main food till a year.
Can I give Water to Babies?
• Water along with a meal can be offered when babies start solids
• You can offer no more than 100 ml of water for babies per day.
• Breastmilk contains 88% water and hence water to breastfed babies isn’t ideally required, even in extremely hot weather.
• The same applies to Formula-fed babies but you can offer a bit of water in really hot weather.
How to flavor the baby food?
• Use natural spices to flavor baby food.
• Cumin, cinnamon, cardamom can be added as early as 6 months
• Pepper, coriander, chilly powders, and other herbs can be slowly introduced too.
• Ginger, lemon, onion, and garlic can also be added.
• Natural sweeteners like fruit purees, dates syrup, and raisins syrup, dates powder can be used once in a while.
• The regular sweetening of baby food can make babies develop a sweet tooth and avoid having family food in the future.
As informed in the introduction part of the article here are few excerpts about the fact of misguiding by few pediatricians and Online Websites.
“The advice for inappropriate weaning foods given by so many health professionals raises important questions regarding harmful traditional practices and the training of health professionals regarding them. To add to the grim scenario, currently, there are various websites on the Internet which are recommending the use of dal water as a weaning food which clearly sends the wrong message to a large number of people especially younger, first-time parents.”
Reference from here: http://medind.nic.in/icb/t07/i10/icbt07i10p962.pdf
Video: How to Introduce Solids to Baby | Can I give Juice, Water & Dal ka Paani for Babies?
- Video in Hindi – शिशुओं को ठोस आहार कैसे देना चाहिये?
- Video in Kannada – ಶಿಶುಗಳಿಗೆ ಘನ ಆಹಾರ ಹೇಗೆ ಕೊಡಬೇಕು ?
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