Tag Archives: starting solids

Favourite Foods at 7 Months

Two things before I get into the meat of this post:

1. If you’re interested, read the previous posts in this series first: First Foods and Favourite Foods at 6 Months.

2. This is a JUDGEMENT-FREE POST: Please note that this not how you *should* do things. This is just a window into how I did things, and I relied mostly on my instincts. Do what feels right mama. *Should precedes shame* so I strongly encourage you not to *should yourself*! Parenting is hard enough as it is. You’re doing great!! 

 

Favourite Foods at 7 Months

After 6 weeks of purees, thick soups and pate, Baby H moved up to real food pretty quickly. This was awesome, because I just fed her 1 or 2 of the items that we were eating! I still froze a few cubes of soup to have in case I wasn’t comfortable giving her the food we were eating (e.g. nights we decided to have something like gluten-free pizza, or when we went somewhere that I wasn’t happy with the quality of the food). So feeding the peanut literally meant no extra work for me, which was a great deal! It also made me even more aware of what we were eating, because I wanted to make sure she could eat some of it too.

You can see below that I’ve broken the foods down into 2 categories. These are nutrient-dense animal foods, which contain the meaty minerals she requires right now like zinc and iron, and fun flavours, which are great for palate development as well as supporting gut diversity!

 

Nutrient-Dense Foods

Eggs – I scrambled them for a few weeks, followed by frying overhard (emphasis on the yolk), and cutting into strips so she could hold them. By the end of 7 months, we would scramble them with spinach, or fry overhard and give her pieces of the yolk to pick up.

Pate – as soon as I discovered that she tolerated onions and garlic just fine, I stopped making baby-specific pate and just made my favourite pate! Bonus is it got me eating pate again…haha!

Fish – we stuck with salmon, because we made it a lot, and it flakes really well. At first we had to give her a bit of water to sip on, because it was dry, and it stuck to her palate, causing some minor gagging. But after a few times eating it, she became a pro!

Meat – she absolutely loved large chunks of meat, like beef strips or a piece of pork chop. We made sure it was large enough that she could grab it and not put the entire thing in her mouth. Once her 2 bottom teeth came through, we had to watch carefully because she quickly became a pro at ripping pieces off that were way too big for her! My only issue with large pieces of meat is she didn’t actually get a lot down, but she loved gnawing on it! Ground meat was next, sautéed with taco spices (because that’s what we were having!). It was spicy and she loved it! Halfway through this month, she had developed a sort of pincer precursor and ground meat actually let her practice it!

 

 

Fun Flavours

Ferments – I started her on a bit of plain, homemade kombucha, which was very tart! She loved it! Next I did a few pieces of sauerkraut (also homemade). I literally only gave her 2 tiny shreds, to make sure the cabbage didn’t bother her belly (note: I was super cautious because she didn’t tolerate ANY brassicas in my diet for her first 5 months). By the end of the month she would eat about a teaspoon. The sour taste was hilarious. She ate it, reacted strongly, and immediately went back for more!

Cucumber – I cut off a large chunk, and peeled half of it (the non-peeled side helps with grip). This was amazing for teething because it’s cold and firm but soft.

Asparagus – this was one of her favourites! She loved chewing on them. She didn’t actually eat a ton, but enjoyed mashing it with her gums.

Soups – we continued with soups from 6 months, although it became much easier because we were able to give it to her in a sippy cup with a built in straw! She stopped taking it from a spoon (because she wanted to feed herself) and instead smacked the spoon sending soup flying. Thank goodness for the dog. The straw-based sippy cup was a game-changer! The 2 favourites were Thai Butternut Squash and Ginger Carrot.

Avocado – she loved avocado, and would easily polish off a ¼ of one. It is interesting to note that, while it didn’t cause any discomfort, the little pieces routinely ended up in her diaper. So clearly was not digesting it well yet! At least I know it’s feeding beneficial gut critters!

Coconut milk – I exclusively used Aroy D brand, because there is nothing in the but coconut and water. Please note that I was not giving her this as “milk” or a replacement for breastmilk or formula. When she needed a bit of liquid to help swallow something like salmon, instead of giving her water (which fills up space with no nutrients), I chose to give her a liquid that also had a ton of healthy fats! At first we gave it to her in a shot glass, but by the end of the month the straw-sippy cup was preferred because she could feed herself! I never gave her more than ½ – 1 once at a time, because I didn’t want her filling up on that instead of breastmilk.

Sweet potato – we often shred sweet potatoes as a quick starch with many of our meals. I made sure to add some extra fat like olive oil or coconut oil to hers. She really enjoyed it, but it also let her practice her pincer! Kind of like the real food alternative to cheerios!

Favourite Foods at 6 Months

JUDGEMENT-FREE POST: Please note that this not how you *should* do things. This is just a window into how I did things, and I relied mostly on my instincts. Do what feels right mama. *Should precedes shame* so I strongly encourage you not to *should yourself*! Parenting is hard enough as it is. You’re doing great!! 

 

We started solids with Baby H at about 5.5 months. Prior to having a baby I was fairly strict on the “wait til 6 months” approach, and then as I’ve learned with babies, you really have NO idea how things are going to go, until you get there. So when she was clearly ready, we started!

 

My Approach

There is a lot of discussion about which is better, purees or baby-led weaning. In my experience, you need to trust your instincts! We started with purees because historically, moms would have likely chewed the food before giving it to the kid, and purees mimic that (as does chewing the food, which you can totally do). I also really wanted to get some of the important nutrients missing from my milk (iron, zinc) into her, so I didn’t want to rely on her getting it in her mouth on her own! Not to mention food waste. We spend a pretty penny on our food, and I hate unnecessary food waste so having her throw food all over the place kind of makes me cringe. Luckily the dog helps out there, which makes me feel less stressed about it! So we started with purees of real food (thinned out with bone broth or breastmilk) increasing the thickness of the purees as she developed her eating skills!

Why I Didn’t Do One Food At A Time

First of all, this makes for an incredibly bland diet. It kind of makes sense to me that if we want to develop a robust palate in our kiddos, we need to give them interesting foods with lots of flavours!

But more importantly, we have a relatively short window before kids enter their neophobic phase. Often at 2, kids become less likely to try new things – although check out Holistic Little Sprouts for great tips for working around that! If we try one ingredient per week, and you start at 6 months, you get maybe 26 foods in by the time they’re a year. Also, I don’t think historically mamas would have taken the time to make special meals for their kids. 

So instead, I made lovely flavoured foods – food that we would also want to eat! I made sure she had liver or salmon, or at least egg yolk, most days, and other than that we played around with fun-flavoured soups that I made for the whole family!

Three Meals at the Table

Part of what we want to teach her, is that meals happen at the dinner table with family. For that reason, we don’t feed her and then eat ourselves. And we don’t wait to eat dinner after she goes to bed. We all eat together. At breakfast and lunch, at least one of us eats with her as well. When she was just starting solids, we gave her liver or salmon at one meal, and breastmilk popsicles at the other two. Making sure she was always at the table with us for meal time.

Favourite Recipes

Chicken Liver Pate I like this recipe because it doesn’t use garlic or onion, which may upset a baby’s belly in the beginning. I modified to use bone broth instead of cream, coconut oil instead of butter, rosemary instead of thyme, no allspice because I didn’t have any, and a gala apple instead of a green one!

Egg Yolk – I have nothing against a whole egg! But starting with purees makes a whole egg a little challenging. A hard boiled egg yolk, mixed with breastmilk turns into a great puree! 

Salmon with Ginger & Orange I modified this recipe, using the juice of ½ an orange, and a piece of ginger pressed through a garlic press. Then pureed it with bone broth.

Carrot Soup with Cumin and Coriander (only used a bit of onion)

Avocado

Spinach and Zucchini Soup (inspired by French Kids Eat Everything)

Pear and Leak Soup (inspired by French Kids Eat Everything)

Sweet Potato mashed with Bone Broth

Breastmilk Popsicles

First Foods

JUDGEMENT-FREE POST: Please note that this not how you *should* do things. This is just a window into how I did things, and I relied mostly on my instincts. Do what feels right mama. *Should precedes shame* so I strongly encourage you not to *should yourself*! Parenting is hard enough as it is. You’re doing great!! 

Introducing foods to your baby can be a fun, but also intimidating process. The best advice I can give is to (a) understand when a baby is ready for food, (b) identify your goal with food intro and (c) have a few resources you can trust!

 

When Is A Baby Ready For Food?

There are 3 things you want to look for:

  1. Interest. Ideally your kid is expressing an interest in what you’re doing when you’re eating. They might want to grab your food, or try putting things in their mouth. This is a little tricky, because as of 4 months most babies put everything into their mouths, and suddenly are a lot more interested in the world, so this isn’t the only consideration for being food-ready.
  2. Sitting Up Independently. For safety reasons, it is best if your kid can sit up, mostly unassisted. Sticking them in the bumbo doesn’t count!
  3. No More Tongue-Thrust Reflux. The tongue thrust reflex is an important safety reflex in newborns. If something solid gets in their mouth, the tongue automatically pushes it away, to protect the airway. This tends to disappear somewhere between 4-7 months. (NOTE: I struggled to find a video showing the tongue-thrust reflex, other than this one, but I’m posting cautiously. I promise I’m not judging this family, it’s just a great example of the reflex!)

 

My 2 Goals with Food Intro

NUTRITION: My first goal was nutrition – obviously! Breastmilk is notoriously low in iron and zinc, and no matter how many supplements you take, it won’t become sufficient for your kiddo. That’s why the recommendation from the medical community is to start with iron-fortified grains. Since I am a real-foodie, the idea of using a fortified food as a first food doesn’t sit well with me. Not to mention grains are full of anti-nutrients that actually inhibit nutrient absorption and can contribute to poor gut-health. A lot of real-foodies, or those who follow baby-led weaning principles, choose root veggies as an alternative. But, those don’t contain the nutrients babies need! So instead, I went straight to the source of iron…meat, specifically liver. The first food that we gave Baby H was pate – specifically my friend Megan Garcia’s Pate. Although I modified the recipe to be dairy-free (I used bone broth and coconut oil), and I used ingredients I had on hand such as chicken livers (instead of beef), rosemary and a gala apple.

FUN & FLAVOUR: To avoid becoming too clinical about food, I also started introducing fun, high-flavour foods. While babies don’t need fruits & vegetables til around 1 year, I played around with them to help develop her palate. I took a page out of the book French Kids Eat Anything (stay tuned for a post on this amazing book) and started with fun soups. I also did not worry about introducing one food at a time, since that (a) didn’t make intuitive sense to me (b) there’s no evidence to back that up and (c) food should taste good, not bland! So my soups contained big flavours like cumin, ginger, coriander, and even Thai curry! Things we wanted to eat!

Check out my post on Favourite Foods at 6 Months!

 

Resources

Megan Garcia – my friend Megan is a wonderful resource. She has a ton of free information to get you started. But even better, she has a course you can take, which walks you through nutrition and introducing foods to your baby! Great for anyone who wants to go into this stage with all the knowledge and confidence!

CanDo Kiddo – I subscribe to Rachel’s newsletter, and there was one video that really resonated with me. It showed the stages of muscle development as a child learns to move food through their mouth. It was absolutely fascinating. She also has great info on her blog, as well as a course you can take to boost confidence!

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