References:

1. Government of Canada - Nutrition for Healthy Term Infants: Recommendations from Birth to Six Months

2. Unlock Food - Introducing Solid Food to Your Baby 

3. Unlock Food - Infant feeding

What Are The Main Recommendations?

• For the first 6 months, breast/chest feed exclusively
• Between 6 months and 2 years, breast/chest feed in compliment with other feeding

Exclusive Breast/Chest Feeding

• Infant only consumes breast/human milk (breast/chest feeding or expressed milk)
• No other food or liquid including water
• Can have vitamin supplements
  • Recommendations include daily vitamin D supplement of 10 µg

Why Breast/Chest Feeding?

• Infants can digest it easily
• Human milk will adapt to support baby’s growth and development
• It has bioactive factors
  • Anti-infective immunoglobulins
  • White blood cells
• Protects against illness
  • Gastrointestinal infections
  • Respiratory tract infections

What About After 6 Months?

• Complimentary feeding/solids can be introduced
  • Signs your baby is ready:
    • Head control
    • Infant can sit up and lean forward with support
    • Infant can let the parent/guardian know when they are full (turn their head away)
    • Infant can pick up food and put it in their mouth
    • Your baby shows an interest in solid food
  • First food should be rich in iron
    • Infant’s iron stores are depleted when they turn 6 months old
    • Iron is important for development of physical and cognitive growth
    • Examples include:
      • Meat
      • Alternative for meat    
      • Eggs
      • Tofu
      • Legumes
    • Should be offered to infant at least 2 or more times a day
• Slowly increase the number of complementary foods offered
• Examples of food to offer are
  • Vegetables – well cooked, mashed, soft
  • Fruit- mango, banana
  • Full fat cheese and yogurt
  • Grain – whole grain bread, pasta
• Offer different textures
  • Pureed
  • Mashed
  • Ground
• Begin to offer 3.25% homogenized cow’s milk around 9-12 months and no more than 750mL/day

Responsive Feeding

• Based on infant’s hunger cues
• Offer finger foods to increase comfortability self-feeding
• Encourage infant to use open cup

Tips To Introduce Solid Food

• "Food under one is just for fun"
  • More about exploration of textures and flavours than nutritional needs
• Allow baby to make a mess and explore food
• Sit together and talk to your baby
• Avoid distractions such as screen
• Introduce new foods one at a time
• Offer different textures and flavours             

Food Preparation And Safety

• Infants should always be supervised during feeding
• Avoid
  • Hard, small round food
  • Smooth and sticky food
  • Honey under the age of 1
  • Raw or undercooked meat/eggs/fish
  • Unpasteurized milk products
  • Unpasteurized juice
  • Adding salt or sugar
• Ensure cross contamination between cooked and uncooked foods does not occur
• Cut food into smaller pieces

Further Your Learning:

1.Government of Canada - Nutrition for Healthy Term Infants: Recommendations from Birth to Six Months

2. Unlock Food - Introducing Solid Food to Your Baby 

3. Unlock Food - Infant Feeding

Shareable Resources For Clients:

1. Unlock Food - Introducing Solid Food to Your Baby 

2. Unlock Food - Infant Feeding

3. Nutrition Connections- Feeding Your Baby * Clicking this link will take you to the Infant & Prenatal webpage where you must click the PDF listed under "Feeding Your Baby". Please note only the PDF (i.e. not the website or the webpage) has been approved to share with clients. *