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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Food: progress as time goes on
Once solids is a familiar part of your baby’s nutrition it’s time to start introducing new foods, flavours, and textures to encourage your baby’s development. From six or seven months you can also move on to Heinz stage two foods. You can choose anything with a yellow label from the colour coded baby food range. These are designed to give your baby a good selection of tastes and textures to keep them interested. If your baby is happily taking solids you can also think about finger foods. This will give them a bit more independence at meal times and really help them to develop their hand eye coordination skills.
Here are a few foods to try:
- Sliced cooked egg – the white and yolk should both be firm and well cooked
- Soft cooked pieces of veges. Try sweet potato, green beans, cauliflower or broccoli
- Slices of nectarine, apple or pear (without skins or seeds)
- Small, well cooked pieces of meat – you can cut slices off the family roast
- Cooked pasta and noodles
- Cheese, yoghurt, cottage cheese
- Farex 6 months + baby cereals
- Crackers, bread (white or wholemeal)
- Toast fingers, rusks, porridge (oats)
- Heinz Baby Foods with the yellow labels
- Heinz Baby Foods desserts with the yellow labels
Choking hazards and foods to watch out for:
- Popcorn
- Hard lollies
- Nuts
- Chunks of sausage
- Other big chunks of food which baby cannot easily chew and swallow. Cutting foods into strips the size of your little finger you will minimize the chance of choking. Don’t give them big chunks.
- Meat or fish bones
Remember never to leave your baby alone while they're eating – always stay close by and keep an eye on them.