Breast is best
Breast milk is the best milk for babies. Breast milk provides the ideal balanced nutrition and protection for your baby. Maternal nutritional requirements increase during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Therefore mothers’ diets should include a wide variety of nutritious food and healthy snacks.
If you are considering bottle feeding, always seek professional advice as once bottle feeding has commenced it can be difficult to revert to breast feeding. Partial bottle feeding may also adversely affect breastfeeding by reducing the supply of breast milk. Always use and prepare infant formula as directed by the manufacturer; unnecessary or improper use of infant formula can be hazardous to the health of your baby.
Before using infant formula, always consider the social and financial implications, such as issues of convenience and cost to the household of using infant formula for at least 12 months. If you are considering using infant formula, it is important to discuss this with a health professional.
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What to offer your baby in the beginning
Your baby has more taste buds than you do, so even something that seems bland in the adult world can be a world of flavours to them. Remember eating solids is a new experience and they need time to adjust.
Go for small amounts of a single ingredient food to start off with, like Farex Rice Cereal prepared with milk (breast milk or formula) or water. You can also try a single type of fruit or veges, cooked and pureed until it's smooth. Pumpkin, potato or carrot are all good choices, or if you're giving them fruit try cooked and puréed apple or pear.
Heinz Baby Foods in the blue label cans and jars are all suitable first foods - that's the consistency you are aiming for.
Babies (like so many of us) tend to prefer sweet foods. To get them into good habits it might be helpful to start them off with a variety of veges as well as fruit, that way they learn to accept both. Pumpkin is a popular first vegetable.