Ready to Eat!

Mar 1

One of the questions we are most frequently asked is, “How do I know when my baby is ready to eat?”. As infant feeding specialists we have the answer for you! Our feeding team consists of an Occupational Therapist, Speech-Language Pathologist, and Registered Dietitian who specialize in feeding and early development. After many years of working with infants and families (and feeding our own families), we know that introducing your baby to food is not an easy process. It is difficult to know where to start, what foods to offer, what chair to choose, when to feed your baby, how often to feed your baby, and what approach to use. As parents, we often ask ourselves, “Should I use a baby led weaning approach or stick with spoon feeding purees?”. Many of us think that you are “supposed to” start with baby cereal even though it is not a nutritionally dense food. Many parents are very concerned about safety and choking. They don’t always know the difference between gagging and choking and what is developmentally appropriate. You and your baby’s health and well-being is always the number one priority. We want you to feel confident when feeding your baby. We are here to answer some of your questions and provide support as you and your family begin your journey into the food world!

First and foremost, we strongly recommend waiting to introduce foods until your baby is 6 months of age. Starting prior to this is not recommended based on developmental skills, nutritional needs and the development of the GI tract. We often hear from parents that they are told to introduce food at 4 months of age and sometimes even earlier! This recommendation is often made thinking that it will help baby gain weight. Research shows that introducing solid foods early does not promote weight gain and babies do not yet have the developmental skills or gastrointestinal tract maturity to manage and digest food other than breastmilk or formula. The following organizations all recommend exclusive breast or bottle feeding for the first 6 months of an infant’s life:

American Academy of Family Physicians
Australian National Health and Medical Research Council
Health Canada
Canadian Pediatric Society
The AAP Section on Breastfeeding
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine

From an Occupational Therapy perspective, we are looking for certain developmental skills before we expect your baby to sit in a high chair and accept foods. Your baby’s chair should provide adequate support so they are able to feel comfortable and use their body appropriately to feed themselves, and chew/swallow safely. When choosing a high chair we are looking for the following:

Proper support so your baby can sit upright
Footrest (if their knees bend over the edge of the seat)
Correct tray height so baby can use their hands (between nipple line and belly button is ideal!)

Each baby develops according to their own timeline. Generally speaking, it is important for your baby to have mastered these developmental skills before we put them into a highchair and expect them to interact with food. Is your baby able to:

Hold their head up
Bring their hands to their mouth

From an Oral Motor Perspective we are also looking at a variety of different skills that baby can achieve. We want to be sure that baby is able to:

Move their tongue side to side (cheek to cheek)
Move their tongue to the palate
Move their jaw up and down
Close their lips
Breathe through their nose
Swallow properly

Although there are a variety of different ways to introduce foods we recommend choosing foods that are:

Rich in iron and vitamin C
Offer a variety of foods, shapes and textures
Offer purees on a small spoon and allow baby to engage in self-feeding
Offer early feeders long, thin, hard foods (large raw carrot sticks, mango pits) to work on resistive chewing (if your baby is breaking pieces off of the food this is no longer appropriate) . Think of using a food item as a teether.
Variety is key