Sample menu for an 8 month old baby. Feeding a baby at eight months: what to feed and what to give? Fish as a supplementary food

What can you treat a baby of this age, what are the features of cooking, how to properly create a menu.

By 8 months, this list is replenished with meat, fish, fruits, cereals with milk and fermented milk foods.

How to organize meals for an 8 month old baby

• Despite a significant proportion of complementary feeding, the baby should continue to receive mother's milk. It remains important for its growth, development and immunity.
• Gradually, you can replace some feedings with your own milk with complementary foods. By 8 months, it is permissible to give 3 feedings to the new diet, and the rest of the time to feed the baby with breast milk.
• The number of meals should be 5. In this case, it is better to stop giving your baby milk at night. He's big enough to sleep through the night without snacking.
• To preserve more nutrients in foods, it is better to cook them shortly before feeding. It is better not to add salt, sugar and other spices to them.
• You should still take into account how the baby perceived the new dish. If there are negative consequences, the introduction of the new product is excluded for 2 weeks. The fact that a new product is not suitable for a child can be determined by manifestations of allergies or abnormal bowel movements.

Children's menu for the day

The table will help you correctly create a one-day menu for your baby. It includes recommended products and their quantities.

Porridge will bring more benefits to your child if you alternate between different cereals. Vegetable purees should also be varied.

If your child reacts negatively to cow protein, you should continue to prepare dairy-free cereals.

Menu for the week

The table shows an approximate menu for an 8-month-old baby for a week.

In order for the child and his body to accept new foods well, they should be selected and prepared according to certain rules. Let's look at the recommendations for each dish separately.

Vegetable puree

For an 8-month-old baby, light-colored vegetables are best. Cauliflower, zucchini, broccoli and potatoes can be served separately or together.

These vegetables are good for digestion and metabolism, and have a beneficial effect on the development of immunity. They are hypoallergenic, so they can be safely given even to children suffering from allergies.

By 8 months, pumpkin and carrots can be included in the menu. But you should give them no more than 2 times a week.

All vegetables should be boiled (10-15 minutes is enough) and pureed.

Porridge with milk

If the child does not have a reaction to cow protein, you can prepare milk porridge. At 8 months it is better to prefer buckwheat, corn, rice and oatmeal.

For ease of preparation, it is better to grind them using a coffee grinder. For a serving of porridge, 1 tablespoon of chopped cereal is enough. It should be prepared with low-fat milk or diluted with water.

Each new cereal must be tested. Therefore, you should start with 1 teaspoon. Then slowly increase the volume to 180 grams.

Dairy products

For a child of this age, kefir, yogurt and cottage cheese without sugar and fruit fillers are suitable. When choosing products in the store, you should buy the freshest and least fatty ones.

There is an opinion that fermented milk products should be the first complementary foods for infants. For example, Dr. Komarovsky thinks so.

In his opinion, they are the ones most similar to mother’s milk, so the child’s body adapts to them very quickly.

At 8 months, a baby can drink up to 150 ml of kefir, and the volume of cottage cheese reaches 50 grams.

Fruit puree

When cooking, fruits are not subjected to heat treatment, but are only pureed. It is best to offer your baby bananas, apples, pears and apricots at this age.

If you decide to puree several fruits, it is better to first let your child try them separately. This is important for identifying adverse reactions.

By 8 months, the baby can be given 200 grams of fruit puree per day.

Meat dishes

Meat is added to vegetables and dairy-free cereals. It is thoroughly boiled (1-1.5 hours) and crushed. It is best to prepare dishes from turkey, rabbit, veal and beef. Meat is offered to the child 2-3 times a week in quantities of up to 100 grams.

Fish

Lean types of fish are preferable. The best choices are pollock, salmon, cod and pike perch.

This dish is easy to digest and can be given up to 3 times a week. But only on those days when the child did not eat meat.

Fish supplies the body with amino acids, fluorine, and iodine. Thanks to its use, bones are strengthened, brain function and vision are improved.

Ryka, like meat, is added to vegetables. The product is first crushed. Starting with 1/2 teaspoon, the volume of fish puree is increased to 200 grams per day.

To improve the taste of dishes and their digestibility, sunflower, olive or butter are added to them.

Beverages

In addition to dairy drinks, you can pamper your baby with juices, fruit drinks, and compotes. It is better to dilute them with water one to one. It will also be useful to cook jelly for your baby.

Eight months is the age when a baby’s diet becomes more varied. Meat, fish, new vegetables and fruits, as well as fermented milk products will help replace some of your breastfeeding.

However, it is not yet time to wean your baby from the breast. It is worth treating him with your milk for at least 1 year.

Graduation and proper preparation are the key to success when introducing new products. The baby will be happy with each of them, and his body will be replenished with new useful and necessary substances.

You notice an increase in the physical activity of your little one. He is already confidently standing on his feet, holding onto the crossbar of the crib. The fidget walks for a long time with support. It's time to start feeding my 8 month old baby. What adjustments, besides increasing portions, should be made to the children's menu?

From this article you will learn:

The child’s diet should be systematically enriched. He knows the taste of cereals, vegetables and fruits, bread products, butter and vegetable oil, juices. All this is nutritious, healthy and fortified. But increased energy costs require a new nutritional level. From getting to know carbohydrates and fats, it’s time to move on to including protein foods.

The actively developing musculoskeletal system needs to be enriched with calcium. Just as before, when introducing new types of complementary foods, gradualness and caution are observed. The diet of an 8-month-old baby should retain familiar dishes, but become more varied.

Strictness of the regime or satisfaction of needs?

Stool is considered normal for a baby once every couple of days or once or twice a day. If bowel movements occur more often, then the pediatrician begins to be interested in what and how many times you feed the child. A young mother is instructed that a child’s diet at 8 months should be 5 meals a day, and the volume of food should be 1/8 of his body weight.

True, it is not clear how to calm a baby who wakes up in the middle of the night if motion sickness is ineffective. You can, of course, say this: “You have already fulfilled your food quota. Please wait another 4.5 hours.” But this is unlikely to calm the night troublemaker. Consider the 4-hour intervals between meals as a rough guide. At other times, feed your baby breast milk or formula as required.

New items in the diet of an 8 month old baby

The following appears on the baby's feeding table:

• dairy products;
• egg yolk;
• meat dishes.

Dairy products

From fermented milk we offer: children's kefir (bio, bifido) up to 200 ml, yogurt and cottage cheese up to 50 g. They contain balanced B vitamins and calcium. Start feeding with a teaspoon.

Egg yolk

You can offer your baby a few grains of quail or chicken egg yolk. Protein is not yet included in the diet due to potential allergenicity. Over the course of a week, the portion increases to a whole yolk daily or every other day. If the product seems a bit dry to your baby individually, wipe it and add it to the porridge.

Meat delights

In addition to protein, these are also amino acids. In order not to overload the child’s body with protein, you need to separate the meat from the yolk. Children are not very impressed with meat in its pure form. Therefore, add it to familiar vegetable purees. First, it is better to offer your child a commercially prepared dish. Turkey, rabbit and lamb meat are hypoallergenic. Start with 20 g of meat.

At home, small pieces of meat are boiled or steamed for about an hour. Vegetables are added 25 minutes before readiness. Everything is crushed with a blender and rubbed through a sieve or grater. Add broth and a teaspoon of sunflower oil or ½ tsp. flax or olive. You will get the consistency of a thick soup.

Chicken is an allergenic product. If you are intolerant to cow's milk protein, you should avoid veal. But fish is a suitable food for an 8-month-old baby, since it is easier to digest than meat. It is offered up to 2 times a week. The following breeds are especially good:

• pollock;
• cod;
• zander
• carp.

Red fish can cause pancreatic problems. Remove the skin and bones from the fish.

One example menu

The share of complementary foods in each feeding is 220-250 ml.

Breakfast

Lunch- porridge with fruit, butter and yolk.

Dinner– meat and vegetable puree with the addition of vegetable oil.

Afternoon snack– fruit puree, cottage cheese/yogurt/biogurt or kefir.

Dinner– breast milk / adapted formula.

Add water and juices. 70 ml of juice per day will be enough.

For a snack– cookies (for children), crackers (preferably homemade), bagels. Keep an eye on your baby eating sushi.

It is not necessary that complementary foods at one feeding replace breast milk or formula. If your baby asks for his favorite treat, don’t refuse.

Hysterics may occur while eating. Distraction techniques will help. Let the child look at the book and eat at the same time.

Feeding a baby at 8 months should be approached without fanaticism. Monitor the child’s quality of life, not the amount of food he eats. Different amounts of food may be consumed on different days. If he does not eat yolk or meat, then there is no need to stuff the child with this. Offer them in a week or two, and most likely he will eat everything with appetite.

The presence of healthy foods recommended by experts in the diet of an 8-month-old baby is an indispensable condition for the proper growth and development of the baby. At this age, physical activity increases noticeably, which requires a greater energy value of the diet.

According to WHO (World Health Organization) recommendations, there is no difference in the diet of children on and children receiving. Previously, complementary foods were introduced to formula-fed children at an earlier date. This was due to the low quality of infant formula, which did not provide the child with the necessary nutrients.

Currently, adapted formulas are almost identical in composition to breast milk. Therefore, the timing of the introduction of certain complementary feeding products does not differ between infants and formula-fed infants. True, you can read many articles on the Internet with recommendations for different timing of introducing complementary foods and differences in the diets of infants and artificially-fed infants. In some regions of the country you can also find pediatricians working the old fashioned way, adhering to old methods.

An equally important point is the question of the timing of introducing juices into the diet of children. Previously, it was recommended to start giving them at 1-2 months, and by 8 months of age the recommended portion of juice already reached 50-70 ml. Until now, in many articles on the Internet (as well as in the advice of some pediatricians), these recommendations have been preserved.

However, research by foreign specialists has proven that juices have an irritating effect on the gastric mucosa and can cause the development not only of diarrhea, but also in adolescence. Therefore, you should not start introducing fruit juices into your child’s diet until he is one year old. Some experts advise giving juices even later.

List of products and their quantities for the diet at 8 months

Millet porridge with banana diversifies the diet of an 8-month-old baby.

The diet includes most of the products the child received previously, but their range is expanding and the portion sizes are increasing. One of the new products is fish, but more on that below. Another difference is that now you can prepare multi-ingredient vegetable and fruit purees and porridges for your child.

Vegetables

In addition to vegetables already familiar to the child (pumpkin, carrots, etc.), green peas and beans can be used. Chopped legumes are added to vegetable puree from other vegetables or to meat puree. The addition of legumes should be small (30-40 g), since a large amount of them can cause bloating and discomfort. Onions can be added to vegetable purees and pureed soups. The maximum serving of vegetables for a child to consume per day is 180 g.

Porridge

This dish is a must for an 8 month old baby. In addition to the porridges already familiar to the baby (oatmeal), you can gradually introduce porridge, starting with 1 tsp. new product. You can cook porridge with water, vegetable broth, breast milk or formula.

You can add no more than 1 tsp to the finished porridge. creamy or mashed boiled vegetables or fruits. You can prepare porridge for your mother yourself or purchase industrially produced products for children. At 8 months you can give your baby 150-170 g of porridge.

Some children cannot cope with the standard portion of porridge or vegetable puree, others willingly cope with it and can also breastfeed. If the baby eats less, but gains weight well, then parents have nothing to worry about.

Dairy products

From fermented milk products, a child can be given not only cottage cheese, but also. These products can be made as an addition to other dishes, or you can feed your child cottage cheese and kefir as an afternoon snack. You can buy them in the baby food department, paying attention to the production time and composition.

It is optimal for mother to prepare lactic acid products on her own. For this purpose, a yogurt maker and special starters purchased at the pharmacy are used. Such yoghurts not only enrich the child’s body with beneficial microflora, but also prevent the development of pathogenic microorganisms.

The fat content of fermented milk products should be minimal. To improve the taste of these products, you can add chopped fresh fruits or dried fruits (pre-soaked in warm water). Acceptable daily consumption rates: yogurt and kefir – 200 g, – 50 g.

Fruits

Fruits serve as a source of microelements and vitamins for the body. Previously, the child had already become acquainted with apples, bananas, apricots, etc. Now the child can also receive currants (preferably golden ones). Each type of fruit (berry) should be introduced separately, starting with a minimum portion (0.5-1 tsp) and monitoring the body's reaction to the new product.

You can prepare a multi-component puree from fruits already familiar to your baby. In this case, its basis (50% of the volume) should be applesauce, with other fruits added to it. If the child’s stool is normal, then raisins and melon pulp can be introduced into the diet. Citrus and exotic fruits (mango, kiwi) are not recommended. The standard age portion of fruit puree can be up to 80 g per day.

Meat

Many babies have already begun to introduce meat into their diet at the end of the eighth month. In this case, after reaching a full 8 months, you should increase the portion of chicken puree. Additionally, you can add veal and beef. Meat puree can be added to vegetable puree. The daily portion of meat can be increased to 50 g.

If meat has not yet been introduced to the child before 8 months, then you should start with a minimum amount (0.5 tsp) of ready-made meat puree. To prepare it, you need to boil (or cook in a double boiler) a chicken breast, grind it in a blender and dilute it with breast milk to the desired consistency.

If you don’t have a blender, you need to grind the meat twice through a meat grinder. In addition to chicken, you can use rabbit and turkey meat for the first tests. If the meat is well tolerated, the portion is gradually increased to the norm.

Fish

is a new product that experts recommend starting to introduce into the diet after 8 months. Fish contains not only valuable proteins, but also polyunsaturated fatty acids (including omega-3), minerals and vitamins.

For the first test, low-fat sea fish are suitable:

• pollock,
• cod,

Its introduction into the diet should be carried out according to the same rules: from a minimum amount (5 g), monitoring the body’s reaction, gradually increasing the portion to 30 g.

If sea fish is well tolerated, after about 3 weeks you can offer your child river fish (carp, salmon, pike perch). Puree or soufflé is prepared from fish. A fish dish can be given no more than 1-2 times a week.

Beverages

You can give your child boiled water (or special water for children). In addition, the child can be given compote and jelly prepared by the mother from fresh fruit or without sugar. You can also make decoctions from dried apricots, raisins, and prunes.

Other products

In addition to the above, other products should be given to the child at 8 months:

• a small amount (5 g per day) of wheat, slightly dried bread;
• biscuits or crackers – 3 pieces (soak in breast milk or kefir);
• homemade crackers from a wheat loaf or dry bread (allow to suck or chew under the supervision of an adult);
• the amount of butter and vegetable oil (sunflower, olive, corn) remains the same, that is, 5 g;
• the portion of hard-boiled egg yolk () also remains the same - ½ yolk 1-2 times a week.

Hard crackers offered to a child will contribute to the development of chewing skills and the formation of the maxillofacial apparatus, which will also have a positive effect on the development of speech.

Diet and feeding regimen at 8 months

At 8 months of age, the child receives 5 meals a day. Feeding with breast milk or an adapted formula must be maintained. The mother’s lactation may already be reduced, but there is no need to rush to replace mother’s milk with formula. It is important to continue breastfeeding until at least one year of age. The diet is varied, but it is recommended to give breast or formula at least before bedtime and early in the morning.

Mom can create various menu options on her own, guided by the following tips:

• the same product should not be given to the child twice a day;
• Without fail, the baby must receive porridge, meat, vegetables, fruits, and fermented milk products every day in order to provide the body with the necessary nutrients, minerals, and vitamins;
• mother can decide for herself when it is better to give porridge (for breakfast or dinner) and when to give fermented milk products; a combination of them is also possible;
• for lunch you should definitely prepare vegetable dishes, fish or meat;
• For dessert you can prepare fruit and berry puree, baked fruit, fruit soufflé or mousse.

To make it easier to organize the baby’s nutrition, it is better for the mother to prepare a menu for the week in advance, taking into account the recommendations of specialists on the selection of products and the child’s daily need for them.

Sample menu

Menu for the day

• 6:00 – mother’s milk or formula;
• 10:00 – porridge with water, monocomponent or multicomponent with butter; fruit puree;
• 14:00 – vegetable puree soup with the addition of vegetable oil and half an yolk, meat puree or soufflé, bread, compote;
• 18:00 – yogurt with fruit or kefir, cottage cheese with cookies;
• 22:00 – mother’s milk or adapted formula.

The sequence of dishes offered to the child can be changed. For example, fermented milk products can be given to your baby for second breakfast, and porridge (dairy or dairy-free) can be prepared for dinner. After a heartier dinner and breastfeeding before bed, the baby will sleep and not require the breast at night. The same recommendations are given by Dr. E. O. Komarovsky, known to many parents.

Always from 6:00 to 7:00, that is, at first breakfast, and at 22:00 (before bedtime) the baby receives breast milk or an adapted formula.

What to feed a child with allergies?

For a child with a tendency to allergies, you should select only products that rarely cause allergic reactions. Your doctor will help you choose a hypoallergenic milk formula. Cow's milk should be absolutely prohibited. According to the recommendations of experts, complementary foods are introduced to children with allergies a month later than to healthy children.

An 8-month-old child with allergies is not allowed to consume highly allergenic foods:

• poultry meat;
• fish;
• whole milk products;
• chicken eggs;
• fruits and vegetables with bright colors.

The basis of the diet is homemade fermented milk products, vegetables and gluten-free porridges cooked in water. Rabbit meat and lean beef are introduced no earlier than 9 months, and fish only shortly before one year of age.

Chicken eggs should not be introduced for up to a year; with the permission of an allergist, they can be replaced with quail eggs. From fruits you can give a green apple, banana, plums, golden currants. Ideally, you should coordinate the set of products with an allergist or pediatrician.

Summary for parents

The diet of an 8-month-old baby is so varied that it allows the mother to use both her imagination and her culinary abilities to prepare new healthy and tasty dishes.

At 8 months, the child learns to use cutlery and behave at the table. Even crackers are included in the diet for a reason - they will help develop the baby’s chewing apparatus and prepare for eating at a common table.

Pediatrician and nutritionist S. G. Makarova talks about what to feed a baby at 8 months:

During this period, the baby continues to get acquainted with new foods and his diet gradually approaches that of an adult. Since there is no complete chewing of food yet, the menu for 8-month-old babies during breastfeeding consists of carefully crushed food. The task of adults when feeding is greatly simplified, because an eight-month-old toddler already knows how to sit, so it is more convenient and safer for him to get enough of it while sitting.

Composition of a complete diet

Since the little person’s body is rapidly developing, the baby’s first teeth have erupted, and he needs a variety of microelements and vitamins for active growth. In addition to breast milk, complementary foods are needed for adequate nutrition.

When introducing complementary foods, one should not underestimate the benefits of natural feeding, because in addition to nutrients, a woman’s milk contains antibodies that produce immunity to diseases in the growing body. Therefore, do not rush to replace breast milk with complementary foods.

Meat

If your little one is still not familiar with meat, then now is the time to offer him this dish. It contains iron, potassium and phosphorus. Preference should be given to dietary meat with a minimum amount of fat. Beef, veal, pork, rabbit, horse meat, and venison are excellent.
Use caution when introducing veal as... The child may develop intolerance to cow's milk. Chicken and pork can cause allergies.
Try offering turkey meat, it is less likely to cause rashes.

Products must be well crushed. The meat should be cleaned of veins and films, cooked, chopped using a blender or a thoroughly washed and boiled meat grinder. Children often refuse this innovation, because it has a dense consistency and unusual taste, so you need to be patient, because it may take more than two weeks to get used to the dish. Chopped meat can be mixed with mother's milk or vegetables to make it more tender in consistency and easier for the baby to swallow. After getting used to it, you can place meat and vegetables separately on a plate.

A good housewife has a logical idea to use meat broth for complementary feeding. But it can be offered to the baby only in the second year of life, because substances formed during the digestion of meat negatively affect the eight-month-old body.

It is allowed to use industrially produced meat delicacies. Carefully study the ingredients listed on the jar. It is not recommended to buy canned food with starch. Start with one-ingredient purees. When purchasing canned meat and vegetables, keep track of the presence of carrots in them. It causes allergies in many children. In addition, if you give carrots more than twice a week, this can cause yellowing of the skin due to excess carotene. Choose canned foods according to age.

Fish

It is a source of calcium, iodine, phosphorus, and non-fatty acids. The fish should be boneless and thoroughly chopped. You can first boil the fish, then rub it through a sieve; or grind it raw and steam the cutlets. Give preference to sea fish, as they are better digestible, such as hake and cod.

Many pediatricians believe that mother's milk contains enough calcium and the introduction of fish can be delayed for up to 10 months. In addition, it often causes allergic reactions.

Cottage cheese and kefir

Fermented milk complementary foods are introduced from eight months of breastfeeding or even later. 50 g of cottage cheese per day is enough to provide the body with the required amount of calcium.

Kefir and other fermented milk treats diversify the diet of a baby of this age. The main thing is that they are fresh, since the beneficial bacteria contained in fermented milk drinks remain viable for only a few days. Purchase drinks according to your child’s age category.
To prepare a kefir-based drink yourself, take regular kefir with 2-3% fat content. Pour 2 tbsp into 1 glass of boiled milk. kefir Leave the liquid until ripening at room temperature, which lasts 12 hours in summer, 24 hours in winter. Then store the drink in the refrigerator for no longer than 48 hours. The maximum serving of fermented milk drink is 100 ml per day.

Porridge

IN eight After months, the little one is already familiar with porridge, but their volume in the diet has increased. The usual composition of dishes from buckwheat, rice, and corn cereals is supplemented with barley and pearl barley. Porridge will become tastier and more nutritious with 1 tsp. butter or vegetable oil. Remember, many vegetable oils cause allergies, especially sunflower and mustard oils. Perhaps you should start with olive oil. Dry egg yolk can also be added to the porridge, making it easier to eat.

A breastfed baby should not buy factory-made milk cereals, because he gets much more benefits from his mother's milk. Therefore, it is better to focus on their dairy-free range.

Bread

Complementary feeding at 8 months can be varied with bread. It should not become a full-fledged dish, but just a pleasant treat that you can scratch your gums on and get new taste sensations. You cannot give fresh bread, it must be dried. You can give the hasty a cracker or special children's cookies made for this age group.

Fruits, berries, vegetables

Many fruits have already been tested in small quantities - apples, pears, bananas. At 8 months, while breastfeeding, you can expand the list of this sweet natural delicacy and include new fruits and berries in complementary foods. Try giving your child apricot, peach, cherry, currant, blueberry, etc. Be careful, fruits and berries often provoke allergic reactions. Before chopping fruits, they must be peeled.
At 8 months, a little person can eat vegetable dishes from potatoes, carrots, cabbage, pumpkin, zucchini, and beets.

Generalized menu

The frequency of feedings is four hours.

Approximate menu for a baby 8 months old while breastfeeding:

• Breakfast #1. After waking up, it is better to offer breastfeeding to the baby. In addition to food, the little one will receive the necessary physical and psychological contact with his mother, strengthening their bond.
• Breakfast No. 2. The child needs a lot of energy to play, so you can offer him porridge, which stays in the stomach longer and satisfies the busybody well. Porridge for a natural dieter should be dairy-free, quantity – 150 g. Add ½ egg yolk to the menu and, if there is not enough food, breastfeed.
• Dinner. Daily feeding is similar in variety to the adult menu: vegetable puree soup - 150-180 g, meat or fish puree - 40-50 g, drink - 50 g of juice, water, weak tea, compote or mother's milk.
• Afternoon snack. Time to pamper your fidget with your favorite fruits in the amount of 50 g, and then breastfeed. Give your child a cracker, bread or cookie to chew on.
• Dinner. Before going to bed, offer your baby breast milk or kefir in the amount of 200 g, if he loves it and his body can cope with this fermented milk supplement.

With this diet, the child can sleep peacefully all night. But if he wakes up and asks for breastfeeding, don’t limit it.

It is important to remember that acquaintance with a new delicacy begins with 0.5-1 tsp. Within 7-10 days, the amount of complementary feeding should be brought up to the age norm.

The baby's diet during this period should not consist exclusively of liquid and finely ground food. Teething indicates that the baby needs to be taught to chew solid food. By offering tougher foods, we help strengthen the chewing reflex. Therefore, when chopping fruits and vegetables, you can try to use not a blender or a sieve, but a coarse grater. If the baby has already learned to chew thoroughly, you can offer him food in the form of small pieces.

Sometimes it is difficult to accustom your child to a new delicacy, but you need to show as much patience and goodwill as possible. You cannot force a child to eat! Mixing a new product with your little one’s favorite food gives good results, but within reason! For example, you can add a new fruit to your porridge.

Research shows that babies who are breastfed for the first year of life grow stronger and healthier than those who are breastfed. After all, formula provides only vitamins and minerals, while mother’s milk transmits antibodies to pathogenic microorganisms to the baby. Complementary feeding in the form of cereals and fruit puree begins as early as six months, but the child is ready for an adult menu only from eight months.

Porridge is a source of heroic strength

When gradually abandoning breast milk, you need to accustom your baby to cereals so that they are the main dish, and other foods are perceived more as a delicacy. To do this, you need to give your baby porridge every day, preferably a couple of hours after the first breastfeeding (at 10–11 o’clock). At first, it is enough to give a teaspoon of porridge per day, gradually increasing this dose to three tablespoons.

For a breastfed baby, it is better to cook semolina porridge for the first time, since it contains minimal fiber content, and therefore semolina is easily digestible. Oatmeal can cause digestive upset, so it is best given from nine months. For an eight-month-old baby, the healthiest foods will be buckwheat, rice, corn, barley and wheat, cooked in milk with a little added sugar.

Fruit and vegetable nutrition for a baby at 8 months

A bottle-fed baby is provided with a fruit diet from 4–5 months, but all fruits, except bananas, are given boiled, and they must be thoroughly mashed. From eight months, it is already allowed to feed the baby fresh fruit in the form of puree or juice, 50 g per day (usually at 14:00 or 17:00). However, there are some features:

1. garden fruits (pears, apples, peaches, plums and apricots) need to be peeled, as they are difficult to digest;
2. It is better to choose overripe bananas - with black peel and yellow-brown pulp inside;
3. citrus fruits, to avoid allergies, can be given two slices a day;
4. berries (raspberries, lingonberries, black currants and strawberries) need to be ground with sugar;
5. a child suffering from frequent constipation should be given crushed prunes - it improves stool;
6. You should not feed your baby canned fruits, since the amount of harmful additives in them significantly exceeds the content of vitamins.

Vegetable purees can be a good alternative if your baby doesn’t like porridge. You can include any vegetables in your diet, but children usually prefer potatoes, carrots, zucchini, pumpkin, beets and tomatoes. Children rarely like onions, radishes and cabbage, but they still need to be offered once a week, because the child’s taste may change. Corn is prohibited for an eight-month-old baby, as it is difficult to digest.

Vegetables with a high starch content, in particular potatoes, put a lot of strain on the stomach, which is especially felt by a baby who is accustomed only to mother’s milk. Potatoes are necessary because they contain a lot of iron, but if the child refuses to eat, you can replace them with hard-boiled egg yolks. You can understand which vegetables can be given to your child and which cannot, based on the condition of the stool. If it is liquid, then you need to stop introducing vegetables into the baby’s diet and resume complementary feeding from the ninth month, but in small portions.

"Renewed" milk

From the eighth month, a new world opens up for the baby, because, in addition to regular milk, he is allowed to consume sour cream, kefir, yoghurt and cottage cheese. It is best to buy homemade dairy products, from which you can make yoghurts and cottage cheese yourself. Recent studies have revealed many dangers in store-bought milk:

• antibiotics - most often this is a cheap tetracycline, which increases the shelf life of dairy products. Manufacturers also add chloramphenicol, streptomycin and penicillin. Consumption of such milk is fraught with deterioration of immunity, allergies, gastritis and dysbacteriosis;
• vegetable fats - used to save milk mass and increase fat content. They are made from palm and coconut oil. Normal body temperature (36.6 °C) is not enough to melt them, so vegetable fats clog the walls of blood vessels, preventing normal blood flow and cell nutrition.

Store-bought milk may also contain flour, soda and genetically modified starch, which reduces the usefulness of such a product to zero.

If you still have to buy milk in the store, then remember that price is not an indicator of quality. If the label says “Normalized milk,” it means that it has gone through the stage of mixing fats of different origins. If it says "Reconstituted Milk" it means it is powdered milk mixed with water. And if “Whole milk” is indicated, it means that it has only undergone heat treatment. In terms of usefulness, the last option will be the best of the three offered in the store.

Nourishing regime: meat, fish, eggs

It is recommended to introduce meat into the diet first in the form of broth, to which you can add vegetables. In the future, it is allowed to mix chopped meat into the puree. If you cut the meat into small strips, the child will learn to chew, which is very useful, because the chewing function relieves pain during teething.

Fish rich in phosphorus (hake, cod, flounder, perch, etc.) will provide the child's body with amino acids and microelements necessary for the healthy development of bone and joint tissue. If it is recommended to cook meat, then fish can be given in any form: boiled, fried and baked. However, you need to get rid of all the seeds in advance. Ideally, it is recommended to prepare your child fish cutlets and sole, which are completely boneless.

Eggs are rich in iron, and therefore very healthy, but at 8 months it is recommended to give only a hard-boiled yolk to a child, since the white can cause allergies. Scrambled and soft-boiled eggs are allowed only from the tenth month of life.

Sample menu for an 8 month old baby

The diet of a child at 8 months involves five complete approaches. Between them, you can pamper your baby with sweet fruit or cookies, but frequent snacking should be avoided.

The following table will help you create a varied and balanced diet for an eight-month-old baby:

When forming a baby’s diet, it is worth remembering that many foods can cause food allergies. These are citrus fruits, red foods (raspberries, strawberries, cherries, tomatoes), honey, chocolate, etc. Therefore, if a rash appears on the child’s body, you need to exclude the allergenic product from the diet and consult a doctor.