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Introduction
Providing the right nutrition for your child during their growth years is important. Especially when they turn 9 months old, their brain is developing and they’re refining their walk. Physical activity is at its peak during this stage. Such activities require a well-balanced meal with the right amount of nutritional content.
To help you out, this article contains a specially curated 9-month-old baby food chart along with a few tips and information to ease out the feeding process.
9 Months Baby Food Chart
Here’s a detailed chart of food for 9 months old Indian baby
Week 1
Breakfast: For the daily food chart, you can include light breakfast items such as idlis, pancakes, sheera, and crumbled paneer.
Lunch: Options for lunch can include different types of khichdi, porridge, and rice.
Evening Snack: You can serve finger foods like fruits and vegetables. Soups are also considered a good option for snacks.
Dinner: Dinner time can include items like Dalia, rice, halwas, and upma.
Week 2
Breakfast: You can include items like scrambled eggs, porridge, and pancakes that will fill your baby’s stomach in the morning.
Lunch: For the second week, you can experiment with types of khichdi, chapati, and vegetable-stuffed sandwiches.
Evening Snack: Introduce a variety of fruits and vegetables along with purees.
Dinner: Pongal and dal khichdi are great options for a light dinner. Sooji halwa would make a nutritional addition along with mashed potatoes.
Week 3
Breakfast: Some great options include ragi dosas, flavoured oat porridge, poha, and pancakes.
Lunch: For the third week, you could try a variation of khichdi by adding carrot khichdi to the diet. Also, introduce salads along with porridges during lunchtime.
Evening Snack: Banana smoothies are a refreshing choice, and you could add purees and fruit slices.
Dinner: Add broccoli soup to introduce a change. You could also add pea pulao to the dinner along with porridge and dalia.
Week 4
Breakfast: You could feed yourself blueberry pancakes to tease those taste buds. Along with this, there are nutritious options like oats and porridges with flavour variations.
Lunch: To fill your baby’s stomach, it is ideal to serve khichdi, especially protein-rich palak khichdi. Sabudana khichdi would be another variation. Also, porridge makes a good lunch option.
Evening Snack: Purees and smoothies are light and healthy options for an evening snack. Fruit juices are also refreshing.
Dinner: You can add barley porridge to the dinner meal plan. Other options include ghee rice, halwa, and khichdi.
9 Months Baby Food Chart
BM: Breast Milk
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Tips To Make Your Baby Food Interesting
Mealtime becomes a battle when you have a toddler who is a fussy eater. You indeed must have a list of food for 9 month baby that is recommended by the paediatrician. If you follow the same mundane routine, your child might get cranky and avoid eating food. We have a few tips on how to make your baby's food interesting so that your child eats properly:
- Give A Variety Of Food:
Who does not like variety? No one does, and your baby is no exception. If you feed your baby the same kind of food every day, they are bound to get bored. Introduce new varieties of solid foods like cereals, and porridge along with smoothies or purees every day. If you’ve served fruit salad on one day, then you could provide porridge on the next, and so on.
- Small But Frequent Meals:
It is much easier to feed your baby by serving small meals at regular intervals. Anywhere between three and four meals a day is recommended.
- Experiment With Food Shapes:
The most important part of the food is the presentation. You can serve food in a round bowl or in star-shaped serving bowls. While cutting the salad, you can cut it differently and also get creative with the presentation.
- Serve Fruits And Veggies Unusually:
Avoid serving the same routine fruits and vegetables. Serve the fruits as smoothies or slice them up. You can make purees out of the vegetables and even present them as a salad.
- Make Him Eat With His Baby Friends
Who doesn’t love a party? Let your baby enjoy his mealtime with his friends. This makes mealtime interactive for your child and piques their interest while eating the food.
How Much Quantity Does Your Baby Need In A Day?
The daily calorie requirement of your child increases gradually as your baby grows. A 9 month old baby needs a minimum of 750 calories, and the maximum value can go up to 900. The exact values may differ depending on the gender of your baby, their metabolic rate, their body size such as height and weight, and the amount of physical activity they engage in.
You must curate the 9 months baby food menu keeping this requirement in mind. Breast milk or formula should dominate the diet plan and constitute about 400-500 calories. For the remaining, introduce a variety of solid foods that contain balanced amounts of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, along with vitamins and minerals.
Babies at this age are well aware of their hunger and when they are full. Therefore, you need not worry about the portion size of the meals, as the babies themselves will let you know. All you need to do is watch out for signs.
Your baby will push the food away if they’re not hungry or if their stomach is full. If they are hungry, they will show excitement and want to grab the served food.
Important Tips On How To Feed Solid Food To 9 Month Old Baby
There are a few tips that will help make your life easier when it comes to feeding your 9 month old baby. Here are some of them:
- At this age, you can introduce cheese, yoghurt, cottage cheese, and a few other dairy products that are soft to chew.
- Babies enjoy finger foods but you must cut them into really small pieces to avoid choking. You can slice them along the length or cut small circular pieces.
- Avoid feeding popcorns, nuts, cashews etc., that are hard and can hurt your baby’s gums. There is also the possibility of choking considering these are tiny eatables.
- Keep a small tumbler of water along with the baby food at the dinner table. It is necessary that your baby stays hydrated and develops the taste for water.
- To avoid boredom, introduce a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, meat, and dairy products to your 9 month baby food list.
Conclusion
The moments when your 9 month old baby is growing up are precious. Their brain is developing at an unthinkable rate, and so are their motor skills. You must actively participate during their playtimes and also when they are learning new habits. Using our nine month baby food chart, you can plan a diet that will nourish the babies and support their growth and development.
FAQs
1) What food is best for 9 month baby?
Ans: Some of the best food for 9 month baby includes fruits like bananas, apples, and vegetables such as carrots, beans, soft broccoli etc. Apart from these, you can add dairy products and good fats such as avocado and nut butter.
2) How many times a day should a 9-month-old baby eat?
3) What are the nutritional needs for 9 month old baby?
Ans: The daily calorie requirement of a 9 month old baby ranges from 750 to 900. You can introduce a balanced diet that is healthy and nutritious to support this need.
4) How can I increase my 9 month old baby weight?
Ans: Weight gain is a game of patience and as parents, you must learn to not panic at first. If the weight gain problem persists, then you can introduce diet fixes in your child’s meal plan by introducing a food chart for 9 months baby to gain weight. This meal plan would include avocados, oats, eggs, cottage cheese, and a few other weight-gaining items.
5) How much food should a baby eat per day at this stage?
Ans: Your baby’s food requirement must be broken down into small portions and fed at regular intervals. Anywhere between three to four meals daily is recommended for your 9 month old baby.