How should weaning foods be given, and how often?
Start by giving one or two teaspoons a day of carefully mashed food in addition to regular breastfeeds. Do not use a feeding bottle. Slowly increase the number of meals and the amount of food given. By the age of eight months most babies need four ‘meals’ a day including a variety of foods, in addition to regular breastfeeding. At one year old a child should be able to be given all types of family foods, although the food may still need to be softened or mashed. At this age a child needs to eat about half the daily amount of food its mother eats. Feed babies using a clean cup and spoon. Do not add water to the weaning food. Watered down weaning food does not have enough nutritional value, and if the water is dirty or contaminated the baby will probably get diarrhoea. Patience is needed when babies are first starting to eat family foods – while they are learning to eat this way they may often spit out the food – this does not mean that they are not hungry. Let the baby get used to one f
