First soft food

Formula feeds that are available in the market. These are very convenient when you are a working mother and during traveling. Also give her the following foods to add taste, variety and health to your baby's food.
Ragi porridge:

This is a very light food and babies like the flavour. Take ¼ cup water and stir in 2 tsp of ragi flour to it. Strain it well through a fine strainer and cook it with constant stirring until it thickens. Now add ¼ cup milk to it and a little sugar. Feed her when it is warm.

Over the weeks, you can thicken the porridge by adding in more ragi flour. Later on you can make the porridge coarser by using a course strainer.

By the time she is 8 months of age, she could eat porridge made of ragi flour without straining.

    Mixed cereal porridge:

This is a more wholesome food and she has to have completed 6 months when you start to give her this. This food has to be given not more than once a day as it might constipate her otherwise. Compensate for this by giving her a rice meal (see below). Discontinue for a few days if she develops constipation.

Flour made of mixed cereals is available Indian grocery shops

If not, take 50 g each of ragi, millets, wheat, brown rice, maize, fried gram a few nuts like cashews, almonds. Roast each of these separately to remove moisture and mill them together and store in air-tight container.

The procedure to prepare the porridge is the same as that for making ragi porridge above.

   Rice porridge:

This is a very easy to digest food and can be started from the time she completes her 5th month. It helps relieve constipation and giving her one rice meal everyday keeps her bowels healthy.

Take 500 g par-boiled rice and roast it lightly. Mill it coarsely in the mixer. Sprinkle a little water on top of it and steam it for 5 minutes. Dry it well in the sun. Now powder it in the mixer and store in air-tight container.

Mix 1tsp of rice flour with ¼ cup water and ¼ cup milk. Heat it with constant stirring till it thickens. Add a little sugar and feed her when it is warm.

When you have started giving her fruits and vegetables, you could add in mashed carrot, cooked apples or bananas to this porridge if your baby likes it.
First vegetables and fruits: When she completes 5 months, you could start giving her fruits and vegetables.
1. Sweet, attractively colored, easy to digest - this is God's own gift for your baby! Obviously, your baby's first vegetable is carrot. Wash it well and scrape off skin. Pressure cook and mash it well. Feed her as it is or with a pinch of salt and ghee. You could also blend it in milk with a little sugar. There are many things you could do with a carrot for your baby!
2. Apples are another favourite among babies. Wash and peel apple and cook it with a little water. Add a little sugar and feed her.
3. Bananas (it should be the non-viscous variety) mashed and given as such to your baby are very good.
4. Green leaves like spinach and country greens are available in most of India. Clean and wash well. Chop fine and cook till very tender and add salt. At 5 months you could start with a little of the water strained out from this. Later on, add these fibrous vegetables to her diet.
5. Potatoes can be given from 7 or 8 months. Boil it well. Mash and feed her. Add a little salt if she prefers it.

Other foods:
1. Introduce dal when she is 6 months old. First dal water and then dal. Mix with rice or carrots/greens.
2. Give her freshly prepared curd when she is 5 months old. You could give it with sugar or mash it with rice, add a bit of salt and feed her.
3. At later stages, give her anything she asks from your plate. Only make sure that it is not spicy and is sized small enough for her to eat without choking her. Avoid too much of a new food even if she likes it.

Mashing foods:
You may need to mash certain foods in order to make it easy for baby to eat. NEVER mash using a blender/mixer. There are several reasons why not:
1. A mixer/blender is highly susceptible for infections as there are crevices which cannot be easily cleaned.
2. If food that is not fully cooked is mashed in blender and given to the baby, she develops indigestion.
3. Food mashed in blender is very fine and assimilation is high. Such babies tend to add on excess weight (even with the normal quantity of food) while her digestive system takes time to learn to digest coarse food.
How to mash food?
4. Mash well cooked food in a round based bowl using a flat bottomed spoon.
5. It is easy to mash food while it is hot.
6. If you are going to mix in semi-solids like dal or curd to rice, add a little at a time, mash together, than add a little more and so on until all the dal or curd has been added.

8-12 months

By now, you would know your baby's eating pattern. Some babies cling to mashed food while some babies readily bite and chew. Many other babies are in-between these two categories.

Whatever category your baby falls in, it does not really matter so long as she is healthy and gets wholesome nourishment.

DO NOT hurry her into eating coarse food if she does not accept it. There are several reasons why a baby might not eat coarse foods or throws up when made to eat them.

One of these is GER. This is a common problem and it persists until she is 1 to 3 years old and gradually disappears.

Another reason is simply being herself! She likes to eat soft and so she will until she wants to eat coarse food.

Some babies are simply too playful to bother to bite and chew. Whey would rather eat something easy to eat and play!

There are others that think biting and chewing is fun…well, each baby is simply perfect!