Breast milk takes care of your baby's nutritional requirements for the first six months after birth. But you need to introduce them to solid foods in the following months slowly and surely. This process of moving from breast milk to other sources of nourishment is weaning.
Welcome to the wonderful world of weaning. Whether you have opted for the baby-led or spoon-led approach or perhaps a little bit of both, your baby’s nutritional requirements remain unchanged.
At six months your baby is about to go through an amazing growth spurt. In their first year, babies triple their birth weight and to grow that much, they need a lot of nutrients, more than at any other time in their life.
Keeping a track of the critical nutrients every baby needs is extremely important. And to help you do that, we list down weaning tips every millennial mum should know.
1. Pack Them With Nutrients
Firstly, the main and most simple way of approaching your baby’s first foods is to try and offer your baby as much variety as possible from the get-go. This way you will be on the right track to getting lots of different (and essential) nutrients into their diet to help fuel their development.
Another factor to consider at mealtimes is that your baby has a tiny tummy that fills up very quickly. This means that every mouthful or spoonful they have needs to contain the maximum amount of nutrition with a minimum amount of bulk.
2. Critical Nutrients
Critical nutrients, such as iron and essential fatty acids are those that your baby absolutely needs for their mental and physical development.
Each meal should contain protein, carbohydrates and fat. You also need to make sure that their diet includes all-important iron, essential fatty acids, zinc, Vitamin D, C, E, iodine and calcium.
These are additional building blocks that help your baby thrive.
Focusing on those critical nutrients, iron and essential fatty acids top the charts in terms of importance.
3. Iron
Iron is extremely important for your baby’s brain development. You need it to produce haemoglobin or red blood cells in the body. It's the micronutrient that enables the blood to carry oxygen around the body to your baby’s organs and muscles. So as you imagine why it's vital for your baby.
Full-term babies are born with a reserve of iron. For the first six months, your baby will be busy using the stored of iron that they inherited from mum.
However, by the six-month mark, they will run out of reserves, which is the ideal time to start introducing iron-rich foods into your baby’s diet.
Your baby will absorb iron from meat more easily than any other food source. Lean beef is a good resource and so is meat from lamb or poultry such as chicken and turkey. Although use the darker meat such as the thigh or leg as those nice brown bits are slightly higher in iron.
Offer iron-rich foods to babies twice a day
As a guideline, you should be aiming to offer your baby iron-rich foods twice a day. Why not cook up a batch of my Mini Star Burgers? They are the perfect iron-rich finger food. Plus they have added grated carrot and apple too for an extra nutrition hit.
If you follow a vegetarian diet, then don’t worry as there are plenty of non-meat sources that contain iron. This includes pulses and beans (lentils, kidney beans and chickpeas), tofu, green leafy veggies, fortified cereals, smooth nut butter and wholegrain pasta and bread.
However, with non-meat sources, iron absorption is lower. So the amount required will be slightly higher. Combining these foods with Vitamin C-rich food will also help improve iron absorption.
Try a steamed floret of broccoli or a few strawberries cut up alongside their meal.
4. Essential Fatty Acids
Also known as Omega 3 or DHA, essential fatty acids are polyunsaturated fats. We call them ‘essential’ because babies need these for the development of the retina in the eye as well as brain growth and development.
Studies also suggest that getting enough of these essential fatty acids impacts intelligence, social skills and behaviour. So you can see why it’s at the top of our nutrient hit list.
And because it is such an important nutrient in your baby’s diet, it’s now added to infant formula milk. It does also pass through breast milk so make sure those omega 3-rich foods are on mum’s menu too.
Oily fish are great for their omega 3 content
Essential fatty acids can be found in abundance in oily fish such as salmon, mackerel and sardines. Ideally, you should include a serving of oily fish in your baby’s diet twice a week. But no more due to pollutants found in oily fish which may build up in the body. My tasty sweet potato, salmon & spinach puree is a good place to start and don’t forget to try my salmon & butternut squash balls too.
Flaxseeds, chia, soya beans and nuts, either ground or as smooth nut butter contain a different kind of omega-3 called ALA which the body has to convert into DHA for it to be of use. While they provide a little helping hand on the omega-3 front, they are not as beneficial as oily fish.
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This article was first published in Kidspot and was republished on theAsianparent with permission.
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