What Is Your 7 or 8 Month Old Eating?

Check out the book "Super Baby Food" by Ruth Yaron. It is a fantastic guide for moms of babies being introduced to solid foods. It has a month by month guide (i.e. What to introduce at 7 months), as well as an excellent overview chart. That chart lived on my refrigerator for a year!!! In fact, I have it electronically. If you want to email me at ____@____.com I'd be happy to send it to you. Finally, it gives great info about how to prepare and store each food, and sample menus. I loved this book!

well my daughter is almost one now but when she was eight months old we gave her table food. Like cereal ( cheerios, fruit loops ) canned fruit with no sugar added, chopped up in chunks, canned veggies with no salt added, pieces of pb&j sandwiches, crackers etc... Even though they don't have many teeth they can still chew up food with they're gums! Hope this helped!!

Hi S.,

My daughter is just about one month older than your son. Her eating goes something like this:
6:30 Bottle
7:30ish Rice or oatmeal cereal, sometimes with a little fruit
10:30 snack: formula bottle (usually 3-5 oz)
12:30 or 1: lunch: cheerios or wheat bread pieces, veg, maybe fruit or yogurt too.
3:30: snack: formula bottle (usually 3-5 oz)
6:00: dinner: veg and grains usually - lentils, veg/pasta, etc. plus fruit if she didn't have it at lunch.
7:00p: pre-bed bottle

She likes finger foods (cheerios, pieces of bread or bagel, small pieces of banana, cooked carrot, avocado - though she has trouble hanging onto the fruit/veg). She also likes fresh banana or avocado just scraped onto a spoon. In jarred foods, she eats stage 2 and some stage 3 (the pasta options mostly, some others are still too chunky for her). She loves plain yogurt and likes cottage cheese. We've tried some things recently she wasn't too keen on - couscous mixed with veg, chunkier apple sauce, etc. My ped suggested waiting until 9 mos for meats/fish, but I have friends whose peds told them to include proteins at month 7... so do what you /your ped think is right for your kid. In general, we experiment a lot and just make sure that the finger foods dissolve/mash easily and we avoid all the potentially allergenic stuff until she's older (egg whites, honey, etc).

Have fun!

when my daughter was that age (shes 2 now) lets see this was her eating schedual.
wake up (6:30a)- 6oz cup in bed
breakfast(8am)- a fruit mixed with a baby cereal and 4oz cup of juice (2oz juice and 2oz water)
lunch(noon)- a vegitable and finger foods (puffs, wagon wheels, cherrios, veggie crackers etc)
dinner(5p)- the dinner foods (chicken noodle beef stew turkey and rice etc)
snacks- gerber puffs, arrowroot cookies, wagon wheels, veggie crackers
drinks- formula, 4oz juice, 4oz water

They need experience with textures and flavors, I recommend making your own 'baby food.' Mix in mushed up veg. into eggs or tuna. finger foods: tofu, no salt beans, peas, softly cooked carrots & yams, tomatoes, cheese, whole wheat plain noodles... keep up the breastfeeding!

As for a schedule, you need to do what you're comfortable with, but soon you want to offer 3 'solid food' meals along with your nursing. I always offered the breast first, then solid food later so they fill up on all that they need with you first.

I hope that you are referring to breastmilk when you say milk because no child should be on cow's milk until age 1 due to the increased risk of allergies.
At 7.5 months my son was just barely starting to eat solids. Remember that the first year most of the nutrients come from breastmilk (or if you have to, formula) not the foods. In fact, I asked my ped because i thought for sure i was doing something wrong and she said that there are cultures who don't even give solids until age 2 so don't worry about getting him to eat the solids, but make sure that he is getting the breastmilk.

I would lay off the Barley and Oatmeal, until after 12 months, to avoid creating gluten intolerance. Both my boys used Barley cereal at an early age (4 - 6 mo.), because rice cereal made them constipated. Both are gluten intolerant (can't eat wheat, rye, barley or oats). Let me tell you it was 20 years of HE(CK), in exchange for a few months of softer stools. I wish I had used prunes or prune juice. The older one is 19 years old now and on an unrestricted diet, with no apparent ill effects, but the younger one (17 years), is still on a very strict gluten and casein (milk) free diet, and I am afraid to take him off. Both boys had severe intestinal pain, gas, and villous atrophy (tissue damage in the intestines) when they went off diet during their childhoods. Both had to be followed by a gastroenterologist throughout childhood, and endure several endoscopies. Doctors don't seem to know this anymore, but in the old days, gluten containing products (wheat, oats, barley and rye) (and cow milk products) were not introduced until after 12 months. Pureed fruits and vegetables, introduced one at a time, with about 4 days in between, is right for your child's age. If you want to give finger foods, try to find gluten free alternatives, like the freeze dried fruit bits, and rice puffs. A little later (at 10 or 11 months, I think), pureed meats and poultry. I would not introduce yogurt, pudding, ice cream, cottage cheese, etc. until after one year. Just my two cents. Food allergies are no fun.

My son just turned 9 months and this has been his schedule for a little while now, he is still on breastmilk primarily. He only has meals at breakfast and dinner since I want to make sure he gets more breastmilk than anything else. When my son wakes up in the morning he nurses and then he'll get some brown rice cereal w/ breastmilk and a fruit or veg plus a little yogurt. Then 3 or so hours later he'll nurse and 3 hours after that he'll nurse again. Sometimes in the middle of the day I'll give him some puffs or something small for snack but only if he seems hungry. Then an hour or so before bed he'll have dinner which includes a protein, brown rice cereal and veg or fruit (sometimes a lil of both). Lastly just before bed I'll nurse him.

He still wakes up once in the middle of the night for a nursing.

A website that I like to use is www.wholesomebabyfood.com. It gives recipes and info on what to feed your baby.

I have a 9mnth old girl and she eats everything. Even when she was 8 months. i started giving her solid foods like i would eat. She love rice from some reason she jsut grabs it off my plate and will shove it in her mouth! lol
but at that time she was eating ceral, and oatmeal, and the baby 1st foods as well.

My 8 1/2 month old eats ceral 5 Tbsp. with breastmilk for breakfast, then I nurse her, then 2nd foods fruits or veggies for lunch, then I nurse her, then more fruits or veggies for dinner, then I nurse her before bed...but she doesn't eat too much of the fruits/veggies, probably not more than a couple of ounces at a time...she seems happy and content, though...

I'm sure you're fine, as long as your baby seems full and is using the bathroom regularly.