The A B C of parenthood…The Baby Meals

Make your own baby meals.

Most of you know how essential healthy eating is important to our growth, and some of you don’t. In this article, you’ll find tips on how to start healthy eating habits for your New Idol.

Of course, once we grow up we have a tendency to eat crap.  I for one eat potato chips and drink a coke every late morning at work. Although, I’ve been trying to kick this badass habit for quite some time.  

In any case, when you become responsible for the life of another human being, it is your duty as a parent to try to install healthy eating habits.

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I’m not a nutritionist and maybe my babies didn’t always eat a ‘balanced’ meal but I sure as hell didn’t give them crap to eat when they were little. Use common sense.  If you need guidance, cooking books for babies do exist and can be used as a reference. That’s how I learned to make a butternut squash soup with an egg.

Meals for a 6-month-old baby

When your New Idol turns 6 months old, you can start giving him solid foods. Of course, by that, I don’t mean full course meals, no-no-no.  One step at a time.

First of all, stay away from store-bought baby food as much as you can, unless they are organic. Even so, it’s best to make your own and it is so easy to do so.

Start with vegetables, not fruits!

If you start with fruits, you might have trouble introducing vegetables, because everyone enjoys sweetness more.  

Paediatricians say to introduce a new vegetable every three days in order to see if your baby has allergies.

What vegetables to start with

Personally, I started with potatoes for Junior and for Blondie Bear potatoes and leaks, because seriously who is allergic to potatoes? But you never know. Anyways, stick to one at a time to be safe and don’t rush into it.

To the potatoes, I would add a little bit of formula, to make it less dry. You can add breastmilk, milk, or butter but in a very small quantity. Don’t do that when you start.  It doesn’t have to be cow milk, which is hard for your baby’s system to digest entirely until 12 months of age.  (I’ll come back to the milk after).

Just start simple at first. After the potatoes and leeks, I introduced the carrots.

DO NOT ADD SALT. It will change the taste and we have enough salt in our bodies as is. So at the beginning, it’s not necessary to add salt to your baby’s meals.

What fruits to start with

Once you have introduced a good bunch of vegetables you can start introducing fruits.

I started with apples (pureed) and then bananas (mushed at first). However, cut bananas don’t stay fresh very long in the fridge.

Peaches, pears and melons are great for babies with new teeth.

For the family of berries, it’s best to wait until they turn 1, same with nuts due to allergies. If you absolutely want your baby to taste strawberries, for instance, you can buy it as a premade baby food, because the allergenic part will be removed. However, even with that, you have to wait for your baby to be at least 9 months old.

How to introduce solid food to your baby during the meals

As I said, introduce solid food to your baby one food at a time with a spoon. Once you have introduced different vegetables during lunchtime, serve one for supper. The one served for supper was also served with a bottle of formula or breastmilk.  

If you are short on time, you can puree a whole bunch of vegetables, keep some in the fridge, and put the rest in the freezer in ice cube trays.  

Then, when you are out of fresh food, you can grab a vegetable cube from the freezer and use it as a meal.  One cube is usually enough at first.  

The beauty of the cubes is that later on you can diversify the foods and mix them together. For example, you could mix a cube of carrot with a cube of leek.

Have your baby try everything more than once. Tastebuds change over time. Moreover, if there is something he doesn’t like such as mushrooms or corn, don’t sweat it. As long as the standard fruits and vegetables are covered, he’ll be fine. You can always try again with the ones he didn’t like later.

Junior didn’t start liking eggs until he was 9 years old and mushrooms way after that.

Once your baby starts having some teeth, you can start cutting the food in really small pieces instead of mashing the vegetables and fruits.

To give you a general idea at what age you can introduce the various foods, look at the labels on the baby food jars. They usually indicate at what age it is recommended to be eaten. Also, it can give you an idea of meals to prepare.

How to prepare the food

To preserve the nutrients in your baby’s food, use cooking methods that keep the most vitamins and minerals. You can steam or bake your vegetables instead of boiling, which washes away the nutrients.

You can use plates or bowls that stick to the table so that they just don’t fly off when you are not looking, along with a fork spoon that makes it easier for them to pick up the food.

When are we eating?

Once you start introducing solid food, try to stick to a feeding schedule. Don’t let special events, uninvited guests stray you away from your schedule and what you feed your baby.

At least for the first three years of your baby’s life, you’ll need to keep to a feeding schedule which means not allowing him to eat between meals even for what we consider special occasions (trust me there is ALWAYS a special occasion).

Laying down solid ground rules for the meals will save you from a lot of troubles in the long run. The way you go about feeding your baby and what time the meals will be the basis on how they will eat later on as kids and then adults.

The following gives you an idea of what our feeding schedule looked like and worked for our lifestyle.

Breakfast

I started introducing baby cereals to my kids when they were 4 months old. Junior had some actually in the evening at first which allowed him to finally sleep through the night. It was only a little bit that was added to the formula to make it thicker.

However, Blondie Bear started sleeping through the night at 2 months old. So, the nights weren’t an issue for him. He started having the cereals mixed in with formula when he was four months old. I would put some in a bowl, and mixed it together. He still had formula in the bottle, but part of it was used in the cereals.

Aside from Junior, at first, cereals were only given in the morning, for the first feeding.

This routine stayed on until they were much older. The only difference was that they had a glass of orange juice and sometimes a piece of toast with jam.

Lunch

Around 6 months, that’s when I started introducing solid food at lunchtime. Usually, it was around noonish.

Once I had covered the basis of the vegetables, I introduced some meat, poultry and fish. Salmon is great for memory, but beware on where it was fished for the level of mercury.

You can puree them and freeze them.  Once they are allergy cleared you can mix and match the cubes in order to diversify the food.

Afterward, for dessert, they would get half a plain yogurt. You can try goat milk yogurt along with cow milk. Just mix and match.

If it wasn’t yogurt or greek yogurt, it was tiny cubes of cheese. It is recommended to introduce at first pasteurized cheeses, like mozzarella or mild cheddar, because they are less likely to contain illness-causing bacteria. You can also put some grated Emmental cheese in the purees.

Afternoon snack

The afternoon snack is a French thing. In France, we usually don’t eat our evening meal before 7pm. We love our afternoon snack time because we get to eat little goodies (when we are older) when we come back from school. So our afternoon snack is generally around 4 pm.

The reason for this is because parents usually don’t get home until 6:30 or 7 pm. So it’s not possible to have an early bird dinner.

Besides, I noticed with kids that didn’t have an afternoon snack and had an early dinner that they would be up at the crack of dawn (5 AM, yikes!). It’s no wonder, they must be starving by then.

Generally, I would give fruits only for the afternoon snack between 3pm and 4:30pm, depending on the length of the nap.

Later on, I would mix the fruits with some plain yogurt to diversify the taste. I never added sugar to the yogurts.

I found that fruits were hard to freeze, so I would puree them and keep them in the fridge no longer than three days.

At 18 months old they can eat a banana or an apple on their own, no cutting needed. It keeps them busy as well, especially the apple.

Dinner time

Our evening meals with my babies were usually a little before 7pm. Bedtime was roughly around 7:30/ 7:45.  Putting a baby to bed after 8ish is really not a good idea. (See article on The Nights).

At first they consisted on just the bottle because we were working on the lunch part. Once that was well underway, we introduced a bit of solid food for the evening meal, but that didn’t replace the bottle.

Then, slowly we started using the same principles as for lunch by introducing some meat, poultry, fish or even an egg.

It’s good to allow them to grab food and put it in their mouth. It will help them in their hand-eye coordination when you teach them to use a spoon or a fork.

As for quantities, it’s best to ask your paediatrician as ideas change throughout the years and by continent. Just know this, your baby’s stomach is roughly the size of its fist. So don’t over feed him and try to keep things balanced. I just eye balled and had very cheeky babys until they started walking around.

What should they drink?

Aside from breastmilk or formula, only give water to drink to your baby.   Babies need to drink water and to enjoy it without anything else added.

However, at snack time, once the vegetables and fruits were well underway, I would put a few drops of apple juice in a sippy cup mixed with a lot of water for a special treat. ONLY at snack time. I didn’t do this until they were around 9 months old.

At the age of 1 your baby can start drinking cow milk.

Milk

To introduce regular milk, you can cut it with water at first.  As I said cow milk is hard to digest and can create allergies. Other types of milk do exist and I suggest you alternate them.  Goat milk is great, I even bought plain yogurt made from goat milk. So add water to the milk and gradually stop using baby formula around 12-15 months.

By alternating milks you can prevent some allergies and illnesses.

By the time your baby turns 1, he should be having the three regular meals (breakfast, lunch, and diner) and a morning and an afternoon snack. The morning snack can be some cheerios or cut fruits. Just something healthy that they can grab and put in their mouth.

Your baby shouldn’t be drinking out of a baby bottle anymore but out of a sippy cup by the time he is 1ish. Baby bottles aren’t good for their gums, so the sooner you get rid of them the better.  You can start introducing the sippy cup around 9 months old.

Why should you make your own baby food?

People think that it’s too much of a hassle to make your own baby food. Those people are just plain LAZY.  

You have to eat as well, don’t you?

Unless you order in all the time or eat out, you have to cook, don’t you?

Well then, whatever you cook, before adding salt or sauce or whatever to your meal, put some aside in a blender or cut in small pieces for your baby to grab. It’s not that more complicated.  

If you want, spend an hour on a Sunday afternoon steaming vegetables, fruits, keeping some in the fridge, and freezing the rest.  At least all your sides will be ready, all you need will be meat, poultry or fish. SIMPLE.

Making your own baby food, allows them to taste real food.

When we moved to Canada we transited through the United-States for a week. Blondie Bear was 12 months old at the time. He had never had store-bought baby food.

Since we were traveling, I had bought some organic baby food for him to eat on the plane or at the hotel. He hated it. Once we arrived to Canada, it took me over a month to get him to trust me with his food again. He was literally smelling the food on his plate to see if it was the real deal.

The advantages of making your own baby food

By making your own baby food, you know exactly what you are feeding your baby.

You can also save money by making your own food.

Also, you can choose what food you want your baby to try instead of having to rely on the flavors chosen by manufacturers.

You’re not going to find melons or avocados in the baby food section of the supermarket.

grow by webmd

By making your own ‘baby food’, it gets your baby used to eating the same food as the rest of the family — just in puree form. Also, it paves the way for making healthier meals, even as he or she gets older.

Jarred food is cooked at extremely high temperatures to kill bacteria for longer storage. However, at the same time, it takes our the food’s vitamins and nutrients, and taste.

If you need to use baby food in jars, spoon some of the food into a bowl to feed your baby. Do not feed your baby right from the jar as the bacteria from the baby’s mouth can contaminate the remaining food. If you refrigerate opened jars of baby food, it’s best to throw away anything not eaten within a day or two.

Stick to your baby’s meal schedule

I once didn’t allow Junior to have ice cream when he was 2 from the ice cream truck just because it wasn’t snack time.  Of course, it made me look like a bad mother, but tough shit, I knew what was best.  

It’s hard, I know, to act outside the norm because people will look at you funny.  People will try to convince you otherwise by saying stuff: oh come on, just this once.  

You’ll even seem like a bad person in the eyes of your kids because your sister, sister-in-law, or friend will allow their kid to eat between meals or eat crap and you don’t.  They’ll try to make you feel bad and change your mind so that they won’t have to feel bad themselves because they are behaving wrongly.

It might create some sticky situations when your child sees his cousin or play friend eating french fries, pogos, or pizza when all he is having is pureed vegetables.  Tough shit, stick to your convictions.  

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I’ve heard enough stories of people having problems with their kids eating healthy food because they introduced crap or fruits too early on to know that I was on the right track.  

I truly believe that there is a time for everything.  Pizza is not necessarily bad nor are french fries, but they do nothing nutrition wise.

Therefore, it’s important to create healthy habits first. The rest can come slowly later.  However, candy and soda are a complete  NO-NO until 6 years old, and even so….best to avoid as much as possible.

Eating out with a baby and toddlers

When you go to visit someone, store your homemade food in a container that you can heat up on a stove (not the microwave!!) in a pot of water that you boil. Bring all your essentials.

Always bring food along with you.

If we were entertaining or invited somewhere, while every one was having their cocktails I would use that time to feed my baby since it was usually around that time anyways. That way, my child wouldn’t be tempted by what was being served during the cocktail: potato chips, salami, cheese, juices. They weren’t all bad, but I knew he wouldn’t eat his dinner if he started snacking on them. I knew it would mess up his schedule and his rhythm.

If you are just going on an outing, have snacks with you just in case it’s getting close to lunchtime or snack time and you are not home yet.

If we were to eat in a restaurant and that I hadn’t planned on it or didn’t have enough food, I would always order soup, not the children’s menu.

Soups are usually healthier, sometimes they contain too much salt, but it is usually a safe and healthy bet.  You can always share some of your meal with your baby or order an extra side of greens.

For more tips on eating out with kids, you can read about it HERE.

Snacks like an apple, carrots, cheerios, banana are easy to carry around.

So, in other words, cook healthy, try to stick to a schedule, and follow your guts as long and as much as you can.  

You know the saying. It isn’t because everyone is doing it that it is necessarily the right way.  Some people don’t know better, don’t be one of those people!