Chopped fruit – you can mix fresh fruit with raisinsAt seven months most babies are entering the easiest weaning stage. The initial (parental) worry about starting foods has passed, and most babies of this age are happy to try lots of new foods. This is a good time to introduce as many flavours as possible. In France, the word ‘diversification’ is used when talking about the introduction of solid foods. This is a great descriptive word for what happens next: diversifying textures and flavours. It’s time to give everything a try; don’t just stick to carrots, sweet potato and butternut squash – include meat, fish, pulses and green vegetables too.
While you should not add sugar or salt to your baby’s food, baby food does not need to be bland. Aromatic spices (those which aren’t hot) and herbs can be used. Try a small pinch of turmeric, cumin, coriander, basil, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, dill, mint or parsley, for example.
If you are vegetarian then ensure you are using non-meat protein – see Chapter 9 for examples of non-meat proteins. Even if you are not vegetarian, consider including pulse- and vegetable-based dishes (such as the Lightly Spiced Dhal and Potato or Chickpea and Banana Curry in the recipe section, here) as part of your baby’s diet, for a healthy addition to your usual meals.
Giving a great variety of flavours and textures at this age helps to ensure your baby gets a wide range of nutrients. Another advantage of diversification is that it helps to prevent fussy eating later, which inevitably begins some time after your baby’s first birthday. It’s certainly worth investing your efforts now in diversifying – you will be paid back later with your own petit gourmand!
By the time your baby is eight months old he will be having three meals a day of one or two courses. He may start to have one or two snacks at about eight months, but it’s fine if he doesn’t want that yet (see here). You may also notice that your baby is drinking less milk.
Throughout the day your baby will need a variety of foods from all the food groups (see table here).
| Potatoes and starchy foods, such as rice, pasta or bread | 2–3 servings | |
| Fruit and vegetables | 2–3 servings | |
| Meat, fish, egg, or meat alternatives | 1–2 servings | |
| Milk | Breast milk or 500–600 ml (17½–21 fl oz) formula |
A ‘serving’ is how many times a day you offer that type of food. Babies eat different amounts, so a serving size will be different for each baby. For the majority of babies, ‘follow their appetites’ is sound advice. You should follow responsive weaning principles and take notice of your baby when he tells you he is full (see here). Be flexible with daily portion sizes: make sure you offer your baby enough to eat and allow sufficient time to eat it. Babies and children do not eat to prescribed amounts, and it’s probably not how you eat either – we usually experience days when we are more hungry than others.
All the recipes shown are family recipes and suitable for any age, although you may need to adjust quantity or texture.
| Early morning | Usual milk feed | |
| Breakfast | Wheat biscuit and mashed berries with baby’s usual milk | |
| Lunch | Salmon with sweet potato and green beans Yoghurt with fruit Water to drink | |
| Mid afternoon | Usual milk feed | |
| Dinner | Cheesy omelette with cooked vegetable sticks and wholegrain bread fingers Fruit sticks Water to drink | |
| Before bed | Usual milk feed |
| Early morning | Usual milk feed | |
| Breakfast | Porridge sweetened with mashed banana | |
| Lunch | Chicken Casserole with Potato and Carrot Sticks (R) Vanilla Custard with Raspberry Coulis (R) Water to drink | |
| Mid afternoon | Usual milk feed | |
| Dinner | Ratatouille (R) with sweet potato wedges (see the Roasted Vegetables recipe) Yoghurt and fruit Water to drink | |
| Before bed | Usual milk feed |
| Early morning | Usual milk feed | |
| Breakfast | Scrambled egg on wholegrain bread fingers | |
| Lunch | Macaroni and Broccoli Cheese (R) Natural yoghurt Water to drink | |
| Mid afternoon | Usual milk feed | |
| Dinner | Lentil and Rice Sticky Balls (R) with green vegetable side dishes Simple Apple, Pear and Apricot Oat Crumble (R) Water to drink | |
| Before bed | Usual milk feed |
Your baby needs to have his meals at predictable times. He will begin to be hungry for food in the same way that he was hungry for milk at regular intervals. The times families eat differ between households but generally fall into a similar pattern:
| 6–7am | Breastfeed or bottle when baby wakes | |
| 7–8am | Breakfast | |
| 12pm | Lunch | |
| 3pm | Breastfeed or bottle | |
| 5pm | Dinner | |
| 7pm | Breastfeed or bottle, and bed |
Most babies at this age will have a morning and afternoon nap.
Of course all babies and families are different, and you don’t need to have the same schedule, but this gives you an idea of how the day goes for many mums and babies.
‘I really noticed a change in her attitude to food between seven and seven and a half months. She seemed to get hungry for her mealtimes, and food was obviously as important to her as the milk feeds.’
Prisha, mum to Anaya, eight months
Babies need to have regular meals to meet their energy and nutrient requirements. At seven months your baby may not want snacks, but by nine months most babies are having one to two snacks in the daytime (in between meals) and will give up the afternoon milk feed. Snacks will become an important part of your baby’s diet, so make sure they are making a nutritional contribution.
There are supermarket shelves now dedicated to selling baby snacks. Like baby foods, these may be best left for occasional rather than regular use. There are plenty of snack foods you can make at home that will offer a wider variety of foods, and therefore nutrients, than the range of baby biscuits, fruit bars and crisps. Inevitably there will be times when you buy baby snacks, so always check the label for the ingredients and sugar content. (See Appendix 1 for guidance on reading food labels.) Breadsticks and rice cakes are popular foods, but are best served with something more nutritious, or mixed with some of the examples below. Some breadsticks are much higher in salt than others so, again, check the food label.
Here are some healthy snack ideas to try:
Chopped fruit – you can mix fresh fruit with raisins
Cooked baby corn
Sticks of Roasted Vegetables (R)
Sticks of cheese – you could mix this with low-salt breadsticks or rice cakes
Toast or pitta bread fingers
Hummus (R) or other dips with pitta bread or low-salt breadsticks
Easy Baked Apple (R), sliced
A mini Pastryless Quiche (R)
Hard-boiled egg, cut lengthways
As your baby progresses with eating, you should start to include two courses in his meals to ensure he gets the energy and nutrients he needs. Puddings therefore should be nutritious not just ‘sugar and fat’ – for example, rice pudding, fresh fruit or yoghurt, not chocolate brownie with cream and sprinkles! See the meal planner above or the pudding recipes here for some healthy dessert ideas.
For spoon-feeding parents, the seven-to-nine-month stage is when you really need to progress your baby in textures and tastes. Texture progression has traditionally occurred in a stepwise fashion – purée, to mashed foods, to soft lumpy foods, to finger foods, to chopped foods – until you are just cutting up pieces of food. If you haven’t, now is the time to move on to mashed, soft lumps and finger foods. Start to mash foods with the back of a fork to give a lumpier texture. Meat can be minced, and most fish flakes easily. Don’t forget to offer soft finger foods with meals and for snacks, for example, vegetable sticks (cooked until they are soft), pieces of avocado or banana, or even scrambled egg. A good example of a mixed-texture meal is cottage pie, made from minced beef, with mashed potato on top and steamed vegetable sticks for your baby to pick up.
A well-regarded study has associated the late introduction of lumps with feeding problems.1 In this study, babies who had not been introduced to lumps by nine months of age experienced more feeding difficulties and had more definite likes and dislikes than babies introduced to lumpy foods earlier. Some babies are definitely more ‘lump averse’ or cautious than others. However, the majority of these problems can be avoided. The babies who seem wary need more practice with lumps – staying on purées doesn’t help. If you have a stock of purées in the freezer, then use them as a sauce on pasta, or add them to casseroles. Don’t keep your baby on them just because you have them there.
‘My mistake was staying on purées too long. I found introducing textures and lumps, especially meat, quite hard. I think it contributed to them being a bit fussy later.’
Nicole, mum to twins Johnny and Alicia, 18 months
Finger foods should be available at each meal. It is important that you don’t stop your baby from touching foods and trying to put food in his mouth: this is an important part of his development and acceptance of foods.
If you feel really anxious about choking, and nervous about introducing lumpy and finger foods, consider taking a first-aid course. Remember, the nerves are yours and not your baby’s. Babies start to become aware of emotions in others at around four months of age, so by seven months your baby is very aware of how you are feeling and reacting, and will copy you. Babies will quickly pick up on parental caution around food so it’s important that you feed your baby with confidence, even if it is an act at times!
Both British Red Cross and St John Ambulance provide baby, infant and child first-aid courses, as well as useful phone apps, so if you are feeling nervous it may be worth going on one of these courses so you are fully prepared.
Some babies are more bothered by lumpy foods than others, and if this is a problem for you it’s important to try to address it now. Here are some things you can try:
Avoid stage-two baby foods, as babies are very good at sucking the juice off and spitting out the lumps. It is common to see older babies who will eat purée and finger foods, but are less keen on soft lumps. It is a case of perseverance.
Cooking your own food is helpful as you can create foods with thicker textures without lumps and then ‘move up’ to lumps, but don’t be tempted to go back to purée. Start with home-cooked thicker textures, such as Lentil and Potato Purée Soup (see recipe here), mashing some of the ingredients so it’s not a smooth purée, or try dips (see here).
Babies like what they know, and to know food they have to see it, touch it, become familiar with it and eventually put it in their mouth. Repeated exposure to a food is often required to get your baby to ‘accept’ it. The figures vary as to how many tries are needed – it’s often more than 10 and up to 20. Regardless of an exact number of times, the message is clear: offer it over and over again, at reasonably close intervals, and most times your baby will eventually eat it. Younger babies tend to accept foods more quickly than older babies.
Here’s a reminder about the things your baby can’t have yet:
Your baby can’t have cow’s milk as a drink until he is one year old, but you can use cow’s milk in cooking and on cereals.
He can’t have added sugar, added salt, honey or liver pâté until he is one.
He can’t have whole nuts until he is five years old.
Girls should only have oily fish twice a week and boys up to four times a week.
All babies should avoid shark, marlin and swordfish. These fish restrictions are due to pollutants found in fish.
He should not eat shellfish due to the risk of food poisoning.
Eggs need to be cooked until both the yolk and white are hard until he is one year old to reduce the risk of food poisoning.
Between seven and eight months your baby will gain greater dexterity: he will be able to drop things on purpose and pass things hand to hand. By eight months the majority of babies have developed a ‘pincer grip’ – the ability to pick up small objects between their thumb and forefinger. With all this ability, your baby will want to feed himself.
If you have been used to feeding your baby with a spoon, you will notice that he is now trying to take the spoon off you. The problem is that when you give it to him, if he does manage to get food on it, the chance of him getting the food in his mouth is quite slim. However, he will absolutely insist that he holds the spoon, and it will get messy! Let him practise with the spoon – that’s how he will learn. Shorter, curved spoons are better than long, straight ones. He will get the hang of it over time. To meet his growing independence, increase the amount of finger foods you give him. Some parents end up using two spoons, one for baby and one for mum.
If you are baby-led weaning, your baby will be tackling lumpy foods with confidence. However, it is still worth thinking about the texture and variety of foods you give to him. Do you avoid certain textures that are difficult for your baby to pick up? Are you sure you aren’t being guided by the thought of mess rather than embracing the diversity of yoghurts, soup or rice pudding? Are you sticking with a limited repertoire of foods that you know your baby can manage?
Baby-led parents should be concentrating on helping their baby to eat enough and ensuring that a range of foods is available. You may like to introduce your baby to a spoon now (see here); with some help he will start to learn how to manipulate it himself. Longer mealtimes with baby-led weaning are usual; allow enough time for a variety of foods to be eaten. Remember that the larger the range of foods your baby eats, the greater the diversity of nutrients he will get. If he needs help, help him.
Breast milk, or an appropriate formula, should remain your baby’s main milk drink, although you can use full-fat cow’s milk in cooking and on cereal, as described above (here). You do not need to move on to a follow-on formula.
You will notice your baby reduces milk feeds as solid food increases. At this age 500–600 ml (17½–21 fl oz) of formula milk over three feeds, or three to four breastfeeds, is usually enough. Iron intake is a concern for this age group. Having more than 600 ml (21 fl oz) of infant formula, or over six breastfeeds in 24 hours, can reduce the amount of solid food your child will eat, and this has been associated with low iron stores.2 Chapter 9 gives examples of foods (other than meat) containing iron that you can include in your baby’s diet (see here).
In addition to breast or formula milk your baby should be offered water to drink. Offer water at each mealtime – as food becomes more diverse and less mushy your baby will drink more. You can also offer water at other times in the day, particularly if the weather is hot. From six months your baby can drink water straight from the tap, rather than it needing to be boiled and cooled. (However, formula must still be made with water at 70°C/158°F or above, and then cooled.) Not all bottled waters are suitable: the NHS advises that bottled water should have less than 250 mg of sodium (Na) and no more than 250 mg of sulphate (SO or SO4) per litre3; you will need to check the label. Water should be given in a baby cup or free-flow beaker (not one with a non-spill valve – as your baby still has to suck the contents out so he won’t be learning how to sip fluid into his mouth).
Your baby does not need other drinks, such as juice. Juice has no nutritional advantage over a piece of fruit, and in fact is less nutritionally complete than fruit. Parents sometimes overestimate how thirsty a baby may be, particularly if their baby only sips at water, and they then offer juice, presuming their baby doesn’t like water. Babies like juice because it is sweet and will drink it for that reason; it then becomes difficult to get them back to drinking water.
If you do decide to offer juice, then it must be diluted with water: use 1 part juice to 10 parts water. In the US, the American Academy for Pediatrics suggest no more than 4 fl oz (120 ml) of juice in 24 hours for babies aged from six months to one year. Never give your baby juice in a bottle or non-spill beaker as the sugar in the juice concentrates around your baby’s teeth and can cause tooth decay. Don’t let your baby hold on to a drink of juice, as constantly sipping at juice will increase the time the sugars are in contact with teeth. Overconsumption of juice can put your child off eating, and cause tummy upsets. Not only all this, but some commercial baby juices are exceptionally expensive.
Q My baby is eight months old. She doesn’t seem to know when she is full and it seems she would eat more and more. I’m trying to follow her signals but she doesn’t signal that she is full up. I feed her soft, mashed foods. What can I do, as I am worried I am overfeeding her?
A At eight months old your baby will probably like to take the lead by feeding herself. You will need to support her with foods that are more difficult for her to manage. By giving at least part of the meal as finger foods you will put your baby in control of what she eats and slow down the mealtime.
Q I work in the mornings and often use baby-food jars and pouches for my baby: they are easy to leave for my mum to use, and easy for me in the evenings. Now I have changed to stage-two foods, my baby seems to spit the lumps out but suck the gravy off. I’m not sure why she doesn’t like them, or how to get her to eat them all up.
A It may not be the taste she doesn’t like, it’s probably the texture. This is a common problem: parents report that their baby will eat purée or harder finger foods, but won’t eat commercial ‘stage-two weaning foods’. This is less common with homemade foods. Babies take the easiest route to food and suck the purée part of the food. When you think about it, spitting the lumps out shows a baby is able to manipulate the lumps in her mouth to be able to spit them! Where you can, make your own food, as the textures are very different to baby-food jars and pouches … they are, dare I say, more like real food!
Consider cooking in batches. You could freeze food to use later, or, when you make your evening meal, save some for your baby (before adding salt), to have the next day. Perhaps your mum could help you cook?
Q I expected my baby to throw the bowl on the floor now and then, but it has turned into a game and is making mealtimes really difficult and annoying. What can I do?
A This is an eight month old’s favourite game. He throws things and you pick them up. If you are eight months old it’s still funny after the 100th go, but it’s not so funny for the person picking up. You could try not using a bowl and putting food directly in front of him. Put less food in front of him and give him more as he eats it. As he picks the bowl up you could try holding your hand out and asking him to give it to you. Don’t make mealtimes miserable by telling him off, but don’t laugh at him – keep a straight face. Some babies throw food when they’ve finished eating, so he may be trying to tell you something.
This is generally an easy weaning stage and is an ideal time to introduce a diet diverse in flavour and texture.
Ensure that you have introduced lumpy and finger foods. If you felt nervous starting with soft lumps at six months, you should have introduced them by seven months.
Keep drinks to milk and water, not juice or squash.
Your baby should be eating foods from the four nutritious food groups, as well as healthy fats (see Chapter 9 for more on nutrition).