Expanding Food Choices

If she's not taking a lot of breastmilk anymore, she should be getting formula; don't replace breastmilk with solids. Her diet should still be 90% milk until she's at least 1. Some babies are really efficient nursers though, and can get their full needs in only 3 or 4 nursing sessions a day.

Most fruits and vegetables should be okay now. Maybe some chicken or turkey if you eat meat. You could also add some spices to the things she eats. I would hold off on grains for a few more months yet; their stomachs don't make the enzyme to digest grain until close to 1 year. We often think of noodles and bread as being very delicate easy to digest things but they're not. They're just bland.

I used to make cubes of green beans with oregano, sweet potatoes with cinnamon, chicken and turkey broiled with parsley and thyme. You cook the food, chop it to whatever consistency she likes, stuff it in ice cube trays and freeze it. Then you put the frozen cubes into a container in the freezer and take them out as needed. It beats the heck out of jars!

Just remember to leave 4-7 days in between introducing new foods to check for sensitivites (so be careful with multi-ingredient foods!)

Hi there! Don't let anyone make you feel weird about breastfeeding at this age, I breastfed my oldest until 18 mos. Other than that, he was eating whatever I had on my plate by about 6 mos. He insisted on it. Lucky for me, we don't add any salt when we cook, and we tend to eat healthy. Things like mashed potatoes, canned veggies with no salt added, canned fruit in a light syrup occaisionally, and cut up bananas were good choices for my boys. Low sodium Ritz crackers are good because they mash up easily. Pieces of veggies about the size of Cheerios worked well for my boys. Letting the kids try what I had on my plate has kept them from being picky eaters. They will now eat everything we eat and some things I don't care for - broccoli, mushrooms, dill pickles, you get the idea :-) Good luck!

When my daughter started on "real" food I used to make rotini pasta with a little bit of butter and some parmasean cheese. I would just cut the pasta in half so it was a good size for her to eat, and she would just gobble it up!

Hi L.-
I found this age-by-age feeding guide through BabyCenter.com. It has some really good ideas, and also tells you what you need to avoid...
Check it out:
http://www.babycenter.com/refcap/baby/babyfeeding/1400680...
Hope that helps! My 10 month old girl eats anything and EVERYTHING (and with just one bottom tooth!!).
-Jen

My mom gave me the idea of giving the baby Pastina, they are really small and if you add a little chicken broth, its like they're eating soup. It fills them up, my son loved it when he was little. Mashed potatos are good, the boxed mashed potatos work so much better, and are earier to make, all the gerber 1st foods are good, they do have ones with meat mixed in them, i know they look gross but adds more selection to what your buying and they're eating. to be honest i can't remember what i fed my son at what stages, my daughter is 6 weeks old and is definitly different as far as eating is concerned than my son, so i'm sure the things he started with won't be the same with her. hope this helps :)

my youngest loved cut up avocado (i made sure it was SUPER ripe and kind of mushy) or you could mash it. orzo pasta or maybe elbow macaroni, cut up? rice maybe? the pasta and rice can be kind of slippery though lol. did your doc say anything about yogurt? with our first we waited until 12mos, but with our 2nd the ped said it was fine at her 6mo checkup...HTH a bit :)

HI my son love finger food. Here is a great web site.
http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/FruitRecipes.htm

R.