Nanny will usually not introduce gluten too early for the baby. This can increases the risk of a baby developing a gluten allergy, or coeliac disease later in life. Coeliac disease is an auto-immune disease in which the immune system attacks gluten in food that passes across the gut wall. It affects one in 100 people today. The current advice from nanny is therefore to not introduce gluten before the age of six months.
One of the pleasures of eating is the combinations of textures, flavours and food groups that go together. Nannies will combine food as babies who are exposed to lots of variety at an early stage will be more open to eating a wide range of foods when they grow up, whereas babies who endlessly eat the same sweet baby purees will restrict their diet and palate.
Fork Mashed Food
When time is ready to move on from purees, nanny will move him to food which the texture is little bit thicker. If you thought it was easy to puree baby foods before, you should see how easy it is to fork mash your baby’s food. Fruits such as a ripe avocado or banana are nanny’s favourite. The nanny will chop them and mash them up in a bowl using a fork. Other purees or soft foods (yoghurt, baby rice etc) can be used in the mixture to alter the texture. Fork mashed food is great choice especially if you are on holiday or need to be on the move .
You can sometimes see nanny mashing food that has been cooked or steamed as well. Fork mashed food is a little bit thicker than purees and it does have some lumps in it, but that helps your baby develop. It is very important to move him onto different consistencies.
When To Introduce New Consistencies To Baby?
It depends on when you or the nanny started start weaning during babysitting. However, when you introduce soft finger foods, try also feeding him foods with lumps. With all these varieties of food, your baby will definitely enjoy his meal. So fork-mash a little bit to spoon-feed your baby. Provide him with the same food as a finger foods so he can feed himself at the same time.
Keep reintroducing foods. Do not assume that because your baby spat out beans once that he will never eat them again. A baby needs to try something a few times to get used to it. Give him time to learn about these new flavours and textures in a relaxed and calm environment.
Baby Snacks
Morning and mid-afternoon snacks are a great idea as long as they are not salty or sugary. Healthy snacks can include things like pots of pureed apple, a banana you can mash, mashed avocado, finger foods like cooked pasta spirals, little sandwiches, a hard-boiled egg, boiled carrot sticks or pieces of raw vegetables dipped in hummus.
Water
Always offer plenty of water as well. Give it to him in a soft-spouted cup and offer it during rather than before meals so that it does not fill his tummy and stop him from eating enough solid food.
NannySOS provides confinement food and confinement services. If you require experienced nanny for babysitting, we will be here for you.