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Tips for starting solids |
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- Babies love plain greek yoghurt and puree fruit rather than rice cereal! Mother of Saskia 10 months.
- Buy some soft rubbery spoons, these are great for when baby is just starting out. Have two ready, one for the adult and one for the baby to play with. To make cleaning up easy use a messy mat (buy one or just use shower curtain material) under the high chair. Make sure you have lots of bibs, I found plastic ones to be no good as they dont catch the food, the best are large material ones with a press stud as velcro undoes too easily. Darker colours are better to avoid those orange stains from pumpkin, carrot etc. Mother of Farrah 7 months.
- Have fun. Don't be afraid to puree anything because just about anything can be whizzed to a pulp. Zucchini makes a great first food mixed with rice cereal. Gives rice cereal a bit of flavour (just a bit). You don't need any books just use your imagination and the internet. Mother of Poppy 3, Harry 21 months.
- Don't get too upset if baby isn't interested initially. Just keep persisting and trying small amounts of food. Some babies are simply better eaters than others. Annabel Karmel's books on purées and starting food are very useful. Mother of Thomas 14 months.
- Speech Pathology Australia website or a Speech Pathologist tip sheet (hehehe:) Don't push it. Start with something bland like rice cereal for tastes. It can take up to 20 tastes before a child will accept a taste. If you introduce sweet foods too early this is all they will want and eat. Children need to try a variety of different tastes before the age of 2, after which it can be harder to introduce due to taste bud memory of preferences (lots of studies on this one but is up for debate). Mother of Chase 20 months and speech pathologist
- Always start off small and simple and have patience. Mother of Lukas 10 months.
- Freeze food into ice cube trays and then defrost as many as needed for each meal
- Essential baby forum is a good reference. Have baby eat at family mealtime allow baby to 'touch food' to feel texture. Mother of Tuscany 4, Morrissey 3, Valen 6 months.
- Mixing with baby formula making batches and putting it in ice cube containers. Mother of Kayla 4.5months.
- Just persevere! It can be quite slow going and if you can help it, introduce as many textures as soon as you can, or your baby allows. Makes it a lot easier later on! Variety is the key too, gets them used to different flavours, reduces fussiness at an older age I promise!!! Mother of Melayna 5y.
- Child health nurse, health department leaflets, books by Annabel Karmel. Mother of Jake 15 months.
- I followed recommended introduction phases but tried a wide assortment of meat/veg and always gave variety. -www.annabelkarmel.com has great recipes -found it easy to offer baby variations of what we were eating to avoid cooking twice so would make things for us and puree/chop up bits, before seasoning, for baby. This way it was always very fresh and she also got very used to eating the same things we did which is nice now. Mother of Annick 3y.
- Bananas, avocados are great first foods and portable, no need to cook, just scrape and serve. Use the gelato spoons from icecream shops. Cook rice and use stick blender to puree as an alternative to buying baby cereal like farex. Buy a stick blender, does not have to be flashy with super duper motor, just needs to last 3 to 6 months. Mother of Callum 23 months.
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