ALLERGY BABYCARE\HOW TO WEAN: HOW TO BUILD UP A DIET
If you are weaning a baby on to solids for the first time, most babies will be happy at first on a very simple diet and you should feel no great pressure to expand their diet or increase the range of foods they eat. Once you have identified four foods that the baby tolerates well, follow the advice above on how to keep these on a four-day rotation -one food per day – as the core of the diet. Give these on a four-day rotation for a few times round to be sure that the baby is well, then introduce new foods singly as the first meal of the day using the protocol above.
You can then either give the new food for the rest of the day if the baby seems fine, or go back to the usual food for that day of the rotation. Repeat a second time round four days later to check a new food, then add new foods to the diet as suits. Build up and expand the diet slowly, month by month, following the timetable in Table.
Weaning Foods
First Weaning
Next Weaning
Not Before
Not Before
Foods
Foods
Nine Months
Twelve Months
Potato
All fruits
Rice
Wheat
Carrot
(except citrus
Oats
Yeast
Sweet Potato
fruit)
Rye
Corn
Avocado
Other vegetables
Millet
Sugar
Parsnip
(except cabbage
Cow’s milk (and
Swede
family)
products)
Turnip
Goat’s milk
Aubergine
Sheep’s milk
Banana
Meat
Buckwheat
Poultry
Sago
Eggs
Tapioca*
Beans, pulses
Nuts and seeds Citrus fruit Cabbage family Tapioca**
*For totally breastfed babies **For part or totally bottlefed babies
Babies often tolerate foods better eaten singly – just on their own, rather than combined – so do not be in a hurry to combine foods. The longer you can keep your baby well, and not reacting to foods, the stronger and better his or her system will function.
Many babies will stay quite happily on a rotated diet, at least until they are well over 12 months and become more wilful. Provided they are getting plenty of a milk that they tolerate, and your doctor or dietitian is happy with their nutritional balance, keep to a rotation diet until the child really refuses it.
If the baby’s diet seems eccentric, do not worry if he or she is happy and healthy and your doctor has no worries. Babies will happily eat things that they need and like, that adults would never consider eating. Babies on restricted diets have been seen to devour large bowls of sago, tapioca or buckwheat cooked just with water, and be totally satisfied and happy.
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