If your little one has passed the exclusive breastfeeding age of 6 months, he should be eating solids. As he grows older, you will need to search out healthy 9-month-old baby food recipes. Once a baby is above six months, he can eat many kinds of food. What you should consider is the texture and taste of whatever you’re feeding them. The baby should be able to eat and digest what you are offering.
These are 9-month-old baby food recipes to consider after exclusive breastfeeding:
Corn pap
Corn pap is the most common food for babies in Nigeria. When processing the corn, you could fortify it with extra nutrients by mixing it with guinea corn or millet. This will make the pap more nutritious than just plain corn.
Also, be sure to wash the soaked corn and grains daily so it doesn’t develop a foul smell. This smell might be a turnoff for babies. In addition, when preparing the pap for your baby, try not to make it too thick.
At nine months, your baby should be able to swallow fairly thick pap. To reduce the stress of having to make pap each time the baby is hungry, consider preparing the pap in the morning and pouring it into a hot water flask. It will ensure that your baby always has warm pap to drink.
Oatmeal
Not only is it a delicious meal, but it is also nutritious and easy to make. While making your baby’s oatmeal, please try not to use sugar. You can make it tastier by adding formula.
Potatoes and yam
Both sweet and Irish potatoes and are good as 9-month-old baby food recipes. The baby can eat them boiled or fried or grilled(not too dry when fried). They can even eat yam and potato porridge.
While feeding your child potato porridge, mash the potatoes and make sure the child eats the watery part of the porridge, too. Another rich way of making porridge for babies is this: buy bones in the market and boil with just salt. Use the bone broth to cook the porridge.
You can also feed the child the bone broth directly using a spoon. Your baby will benefit from the calcium! The baby can also snack on a piece of yam or potato provided it is soft enough to swallow without difficulty.
Rice
Rice is another staple food in Nigeria. When feeding rice to a 9-month-old baby, you should mash it before feeding. Just as a side note, you can buy a small plastic pestle and mortar to make mashing easier.
Fruits
If you don’t mind your child getting messy while eating, fruits make great snacks. Fruits are healthier than biscuits. You can keep your child busy with oranges, watermelons or apples (whose seeds you have carefully removed) and other seasonal fruits.
Vegetables
The importance of vegetables cannot be overemphasized. When giving your child leafy vegetables as a 9-month-old baby food recipe, chop them into tiny bits and mix with their meals. This is to avoid choking them. Carrots and garden eggs are also good for your baby, but you might need to boil these to make it easier for your baby to swallow.
Nigerian soups
Babies love ogbono and okra soup because these soups are slimy and they slide down the throat easily. You can pair any Nigerian soup with fufu or eba when you want to feed your baby. Remember to make your eba and fufu very soft for your baby.
Tea and bread
Tea, in Nigeria, means something totally different. Nigerian tea is a combination of chocolate beverages and milk, usually made using lukewarm water. You can dip tiny chunks of bread in the tea and feed your child. Make sure you do not feed too much sugar that is not fit for kids below 1-year-old.
Now that your baby has transitioned from exclusive breastfeeding to eating solids, you will need to supplement breast milk with adult food. This list of easy-to-prepare Nigerian foods above will help you make the right choice when it comes to feeding your 9-month-old.
Also read: 1-year-old meal plan
