Cottage cheese in a child’s diet: why and how much to give.

What foods should be introduced at 7-8 months

Feeding a baby at 7 months

add egg yolk and increase the volume of fruit puree. At 8 months the range of products is even wider - look at the table:

Introduce new products in the same way as before:

• The first time - no more than 1 teaspoon, yolk - ¼ piece. To a hungry child in the morning.
• Every day - a spoonful more.
• After complementary feeding, offer breast or formula.
• After 7 or 10 days you will reach the desired volume - in the table.
• After 14 days - a new type of complementary food1.

The correct consistency of food for an 8 month old baby

It is recommended that new foods be given to infants only from a spoon. Therefore, a liquid consistency like juice is not suitable for cereals and purees - this pushes parents to use a bottle and refuse the baby from the breast.

Can I give it in pieces?

Weight loss in newborns in the first days

It is more useful to immediately teach the baby to eat food in pieces, although he does not know how to grasp it with the front part of his tongue and begins to smack his lips. Therefore, the transition from pureed food to pieces should be gradual. First, the dish is thoroughly kneaded and very small pieces are placed in the child’s mouth. As you get used to the new consistency, make the pieces larger.

Advice. A good training technique is for the baby to independently take a piece of food, for example, a vegetable cube, and put it in his mouth.

Sample menu

Child over 7 months

Child over 8 months

Diet of a child aged 4 - 6 months

Your baby is already 4 months old. He has grown noticeably, become more active, is interested in objects that fall into his field of vision, looks attentively and reaches out to them. The child’s emotional reactions have become much richer: he smiles joyfully at all the people he sees more and more often, and makes various sounds.

Are you still breastfeeding your baby or have you had to switch to mixed or bottle feeding? The child is actively growing, and only with breast milk or infant formula can he no longer receive all the necessary nutrients. This means that it is time to think about complementary feeding.

The optimal time to start introducing it is an interval of 4 to 6 months, regardless of whether the baby receives breast milk or formula. It is at this time that children respond best to new foods. Until 4 months, the baby is not yet ready to accept and digest any other food. And with the late introduction of complementary foods - after 6 months, children already have significant deficiencies of certain nutrients and, first of all, micronutrients (minerals, vitamins, long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, etc.). In addition, children at this age often refuse new foods, their development of chewing skills for thick foods is delayed, and inappropriate eating habits are formed. It is important to know that, strange as it may seem at first glance, with delayed administration of complementary feeding products, allergic reactions to them are more likely to occur.

In what cases is it advisable to give complementary foods as early as 4 months, and when can you wait until 5.5 or even 6 months? To resolve this issue, be sure to consult a pediatrician.

As a rule, at an earlier age (4 - 4.5 months), complementary foods are introduced to children at risk of developing iron deficiency anemia, as well as children with insufficient weight gain and functional digestive disorders.

The optimal time to start introducing complementary foods to a healthy baby is between 5 and 5.5 months of age.

The World Health Organization recommends that breastfed children be introduced to complementary foods from 6 months of age. From the point of view of domestic pediatricians, which is based on extensive practical experience and scientific research, this is only possible in cases where the child was born on time, without malnutrition (since in these cases the reserves of mineral substances are very small), he is healthy, grows well and develops. In addition, the mother must also be healthy, eat well and use either specialized fortified products for pregnant and lactating women, or courses of vitamin and mineral complexes. Such restrictions are associated with depletion of iron reserves even in an absolutely healthy child by 5–5.5 months of age and a significant increase in the risk of developing anemia in the absence of complementary feeding products rich or fortified with iron. Other deficiency states also arise.

The first complementary feeding product can be vegetable puree or porridge; it is better to give fruit puree to the baby later - after delicious sweet fruits, children usually eat vegetable puree and porridge worse, and often refuse them altogether.

Where is the best place to start? In cases where a child has a tendency to constipation or gains weight too quickly, preference should be given to vegetables. If there is a high probability of developing anemia, unstable stools and small weight gains, use baby cereals enriched with micronutrients. And if you started introducing complementary foods with cereals, then the second product will be vegetables and vice versa.

If the first complementary foods are introduced at 6 months, it must be baby porridge, enriched with iron and other minerals and vitamins, the supply of which through breast milk is no longer sufficient.

Another important complementary feeding product is meat puree. It contains iron, which is easily absorbed. And adding meat to vegetables improves the absorption of iron from them. It is advisable to introduce meat puree to a child at the age of 6 months. Only daily use of children's fortified porridge and meat puree can satisfy babies' needs for iron, zinc and other micronutrients.

But it is better to introduce juices later, when the child is already receiving the main complementary foods - vegetables, cereals, meat and fruits. After all, complementary feeding is needed so that the baby receives all the substances necessary for growth and development, and juices contain very little of them, including vitamins and minerals.

Juices should not be given in between feedings, but after the child has eaten porridge or vegetables with pureed meat, and also as an afternoon snack. The habit of drinking juices between meals leads to frequent snacking in the future, a love of sweets is instilled, children are more likely to develop tooth decay and the risk of developing obesity increases.

With the beginning of the introduction of complementary foods, the child is gradually transferred to a 5-time feeding regimen.

Rules for introducing complementary foods:

• preference should be given to industrially produced children's products; they are made from environmentally friendly raw materials, have a guaranteed composition and degree of grinding
• a complementary feeding product should be offered to the child from a spoon at the beginning of feeding, before breastfeeding (formula feeding)
• the volume of the product increases gradually, we start with ½ - 1 spoon, and in 7 - 10 days we bring it to the age norm, subsequent products within the same group (porridge from other cereals or new vegetables) can be introduced faster, in 5 - 7 days
• We begin the introduction with monocomponent products
• -it is advisable to give a new product in the afternoon; it is important to monitor how the child reacts to it
• new products are not introduced in the event of acute diseases, as well as before and immediately after preventive vaccination (you should refrain for several days)

When introducing a new type of complementary food, try one product first, gradually increasing its quantity, and then gradually “dilute” this product with a new one. For example, you can start vegetable complementary feeding with a teaspoon of zucchini puree. For a week, give your baby only this product, gradually increasing its volume. After a week, add a teaspoon of broccoli or cauliflower puree to the zucchini puree and continue to increase the total volume every day. A vegetable puree made from three types of vegetables would be optimal. The portion must correspond to the age norm. Over time, you can replace the introduced vegetables with others faster.

After introducing one vegetable (bringing its volume to the required amount), you can move on to eating porridge, and diversify your vegetable diet later.

If the child does not like the dish, for example, broccoli, do not give up on your plan and continue to offer this vegetable in small quantities - 1-2 spoons daily, maybe not just once, but 2-3 times before meals, and after 7 - 10, and sometimes it takes 15 days for the baby to get used to the new taste. This will diversify the diet and help the baby form the right taste habits.

Spoon feeding should be done patiently and carefully. Force feeding is unacceptable!

In the diet of healthy children, porridge is usually introduced after vegetables (with the exception of healthy breastfed children, when complementary feeding is introduced from 6 months). It is better to start with dairy-free, gluten-free porridges - buckwheat, corn, rice. It is important to use commercially produced baby food porridge, which contains a complex of vitamins and minerals. In addition, it is already ready for use; you just need to dilute it with breast milk or the formula that the baby receives. For children suffering from food allergies, complementary foods are introduced at 5 – 5.5 months. The rules for introducing products are the same as for healthy children; in all cases, it is introduced slowly and starts with hypoallergenic products. Individual tolerance must be taken into account. The only difference is in adjusting the diet taking into account the identified allergens. For meat products, first preference should be given to turkey and rabbit puree.

Diets for different age periods

It is better to explain how you can create a diet using several examples that will help you navigate in creating a menu specifically for your child.

From 5 months, the volume of one feeding averages 200 ml.

Option 1.

If your child began receiving complementary foods from 4 to 5 months, then at 6 months his diet should look like this:

* - infant formula ** - diluted with breast milk or VHI
Option 2.
Another option for the diet of a 6-month-old child, if complementary feeding was introduced from 4 to 5 months:

* - infant formula ** - diluted with breast milk or VHI

Option 3.

Approximate daily diet for a 6.5-month-old breastfed child, if complementary foods were introduced at 6 months:

** - diluted with breast milk

Up to 7 months, you should increase the volume of porridge and vegetable puree to 150 g and introduce fruit puree.

The materials were prepared by employees of the department of nutrition of healthy and sick children of the Scientific Center for Children's Health and are based on the recommendations given in the “National Program for Optimizing Feeding of Children of the First Year of Life in the Russian Federation”, approved at the XV Congress of Pediatricians of Russia (02.2009)

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