In New Zealand, the recommended time to start introducing solids is when your baby is aged between four and six months. Current thinking is closer to six months is preferable, so talk to your Plunket nurse to keep up to date. Your Plunket ‘Thriving Under Five’ book has an excellent section on when to introduce solids and the signs to look for. By this stage, your baby needs the vitamins and minerals, especially iron, found in solid foods. They also will be ready to try new textures and actions such as sucking, swallowing and chewing. Breastmilk is still the most important food so it should be offered before solids.

Making your baby’s first foods can be easy as most are fresh fruit and vegetables you’ll have in the house for your own meals. First foods are smooth purées that are runny and free from lumps.  This consistency can be achieved using a kitchen blender, one of those hand held whizz stick blenders or by pressing the food through a sieve.  

Some first foods need cooking, while others are ready to go with no cooking required. A ripe banana or avocado can be finely mashed with a fork or pushed through a sieve to make an instant purée. If necessary thin to the consistency you want with breastmilk or cooled boiled water.  Examples of Stage 1 first foods include:
    

• baby rice

• ripe banana, avocado or paw paw

• cooked apple, pear, peach or apricots

• cooked pumpkin, carrot, kumara or potato.

When you’re cooking vegetables for yourself, put in extra for your baby and make sure you don’t add salt. For example cooked carrots, potatoes, kumara, butternut squash and pumpkin can all be first baby foods. You can either serve them on their own or mixed together, like carrot and potato. Although Stage 1 foods may seem bland to adult tastes, do not add salt or sugar as this may create an early preference for sweetened and salty foods.

Fruit purées, like apple, peach, nectarine and pear, are quick to make. Simply cover the peeled and cored fruit with water and simmer until soft. Purée and if necessary thin to the consistency you want with some of the cooking water or cooled boiled water. These fruits are tasty mixed with carrot, pumpkin, kumara or banana.

You can also alter the flavour of all of any purée by adding baby rice. This will firm up the consistency, provide fibre and add creaminess to the flavour.

Your baby will only eat a relatively small quantity at each meal, so with cooked purées it’s worth preparing enough for several meals and freezing what you don’t want to use straight away. Simply put the freshly prepared food into thoroughly clean ice cube trays and freeze. When frozen solid, tip the food into clean plastic bags labelled with the contents and the date and store in the freezer.

The wonderful thing is that you can end up with a selection of foods that can be mixed together to give more variety For example if you have puréed cooked apple and pumpkin in the freezer, a packet of baby rice in the pantry and a banana in the fruit bowl you instantly have ten different meals!

Use these homemade frozen foods within three months (which is actually quite easy as your baby will be moving onto another texture stage by that time). Use the food on the day that you thaw it and never refreeze food after it’s been thawed. Fresh uncooked fruit purees won’t freeze, but another family member can eat the remaining half banana or avocado anyway!

You can buy jars, cans and pouches of prepared baby foods. These are all clearly labelled and colour coded with the age range. For example, Watties Stage 1 blue cans and jars show they are ideal for infants aged of 4-6 months onwards.

Endorsed by our New World Nutritionist  ||   Proudly Partnering with Parents Centre

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