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As parents, you must always wonder how fast your baby grows in the first year. But do you know that as your baby grows so do their nutritional needs and their foods evolve around the same. Today in this blog we have created a proper plan around- 9-month-old baby food, so that your little one gets the right nutrition required by their body. 

First of all let us see what we will cover in this blog- 

1. How are food needs changing in 9th month
2. 9 month baby food requirements
3. Top foods to introduce 

So first of all let us begin with understanding- 

How are food needs changing in 9th month

While a 9 months old baby does start taking semi solids around 3/4 times a day, it should not be overlooked that breastfeeding or formula feeding is equally important in providing essential nutrients to your baby throughout the first year. 

By the ninth month, your baby has reached key developmental milestones that are reflected in their shifting nutritional needs. Let us first see what are the changes happening- 

Increased Energy Requirements

Around this age your baby has become more mobile and their energy levels are increasing day by day while crawling, pulling to stand, and exploring their environment. During this period their body needs more carbohydrates in the form of rice, oats, sweet potatoes, bananas, and whole-grain cereals.

Developing bones and muscles

When the baby is starting to crawl, stand and eventually walk it is important that their muscles and bones can take their weight and are strong too. This helps your baby to achieve milestones on time without any complications. At this age their body needs iron, calcium, zinc, and vitamins A, D, and C to help brain development, ensuring strong bones and teeth and improved immune system function.

Bridging Nutritional Gaps

Breastmilk or formula alone can’t fulfil your baby’s nutritional demands, especially for iron and calories. This is because their natural iron stores begin to decline 6 months after birth. Here solids become necessary to cover nutritional gaps, giving additional energy and important elements to enable rapid growth and development. Fortified cereals, pureed meats, and lentils, as well as calorie-dense alternatives such as mashed sweet potatoes, avocados, and bananas, are essential sources of iron. 

Now since we know how important it is to give right food to your baby at 9 months of age let’s see – 

Needs for Nutrition at Nine Months

Daily Needs for Calories

Your 9-month-old baby typically needs 750–900 calories a day, which are divided between solid foods and breast milk or formula. The consumption of calories ought to be separated into:

400–500 calories from 24–32 ounces of formula or breast milk

Two to three substantial meals (250–400 kcal)

One or two healthy (100 calorie) snacks

Important nutrients that are essential for your baby’s growth

Meat, beans, and fortified cereals provide 11 mg of iron.

300 mg of calcium from dairy and fortified foods

3 mg of zinc from meat, eggs, and whole grains

400 IU of vitamin D-Dietary supplements and exposure to sunshine

50 mg of vitamin C from fruits and vegetables

Needs for Protein and Good Fats

11 grams of protein per day

30g of healthy fats each day

Babies usually require three main meals and two nutritious snacks each day at nine months of age. This timetable guarantees steady energy levels and aids in the establishment of regular eating habits.

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Reference- Food for 9 months

Top Foods to introduce

Let me tell you the top foods that you can give your baby at 9 months- 

Mashed bananas are one example of a soft fruit or vegetable.

Slices of steamed apples

Cubes of cooked sweet potatoes

Pieces of soft pear

Sticks of steamed carrots

Iron-rich Choices:

Lentils pureed

Infant cereals enriched with iron

Beans mashed

Softly cooked dark greens

Grain-based Foods:

Well-cooked pasta

Soft rice

Whole grain bread (small pieces)

Oatmeal

Quinoa

Protein Sources:

Eggs Scrambled or hard-boiled

Fish Deboned

Chicken Finely minced

Tofu Soft cubes

Yogurt Plain, full-fat

Foods to Avoid:

Honey (risk of botulism)

Whole nuts and seeds

Hard, raw vegetables

Whole grapes

Large chunks of meat

Added salt and sugar

Babies are ready to experiment with different flavors and textures around nine months. To avoid choking, serve these foods in tiny, controllable portions. To keep an eye out for any possible allergic responses, always introduce new meals one at a time and wait three to four days between them. Keep in mind to chop fruits into tiny bits the size of your pinky fingertip and cook veggies until they are tender enough to mash with your fingertips.

Now that you know what the finest first foods for your 9-month-old are, let’s look at how to prepare them safely and successfully.

Reference- 9 month baby foods

Techniques for Preparing Food

Methods for Pureeing

• Blending and steaming: Blend until smooth after steaming veggies until they are soft.
• Using a fork to mash is ideal for soft fruits and cooked vegetables.
• Adding liquid: To get the right consistency, use cooking water, formula, or breast milk.

Make sure your baby is sitting up straight in their high chair and keep an eye on them while they eat. To avoid swallowing, cut food into pieces no bigger than 1/4 inch. Get in touch with your pediatrician right away if you see any adverse responses, such as rashes, vomiting, or trouble breathing.

Now that you understand food safety precautions, let’s explore how to support your baby’s developing feeding skills.

Establishing Healthy Mealtime Habits

• Create dependable procedures to promote wholesome eating:
• Establish regular mealtimes in a space set apart for eating.

• Make use of a suitable high chair that has foot support.
• Encourage messy food exploration by dining together and modeling good eating habits.
• Keep the atmosphere relaxed and stress-free and give lots of praise for feeding attempts.

Conclusion

Each step is vital to your baby’s healthy growth and eating habits, from creating a regular feeding schedule to selecting suitable textures and preparation techniques.

Always put food safety first, keep an eye out for allergic reactions, and acknowledge your baby’s increasing independence during mealtimes. Every baby develops at their own pace, so be patient and adaptable as you continue this feeding journey. To assist your child form lifelong good eating habits, establish a positive mealtime atmosphere and keep providing a range of nutrient-dense foods.

Soft baby toys hold a special place in our lives. These cuddly soft friends aren’t just adorable, but they play a big role in your baby’s development and comfort. Their squishy soft textures make them extremely huggable, becoming a source of emotional comfort, a tool for learning, and sometimes, your baby’s very first best friend.

In this blog, we will explore 

1. Why are soft toys important?
2. Benefits of soft toys

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Why Are Soft baby Toys Important?

Soft baby toys are more than adorable playthings; they are companions and learning aids rolled into one. Here’s how they contribute to a baby’s development:

1. Sensory Exploration

Soft toys provide babies with great opportunities for discovering various textures, shapes, and colors. Through these interactions, babies learn to distinguish between different materials and sounds, building essential sensory processing skills that support their development. This interaction can be an important process of neural development that further constructs sensory processing skills in the baby. 

2. Emotional Comfort

Soft toys provide comfort to your baby in many ways. They can soothe a crying baby, offer familiarity in new environments, and even be his or her first friend. The emotional attachment builds security and trust. The greatest benefit of stuffed toys is that they provide comfort and security. From birth, infants will seek warmth and reassurance, in large part from soft, cuddly items. That attachment can go a long way toward a child’s emotional development.

Familiar stuffed animals and blankets serve to bring comfort in a stressful situation and help your baby feel secure and safe. Such comfort will act as an anti-anxiety, thereby fostering a calm and peaceful atmosphere conducive to baby’s emotional health.

Cuddly toys develop a child’s imagination for creative play. Children can weave their plots and situations, envisioning their plush toys as friends or characters from a different world. 

Many parents find plush toys to be effective sleep aids for babies struggling to adjust to sleeping independently. The soft, cuddly texture of these toys provides a sense of physical comfort, helping babies feel secure and calm. Having a plush companion nearby can encourage self-soothing, making it easier for little ones to drift off to sleep without relying on constant parental presence.

3. Cognitive Growth

These toys encourage problem-solving and teach cause-and-effect relationships. For instance, introduce a squeaky plush toy and with its help, your little one will understand his action can trigger a response that is a squeaky noise. Soft toys are highly imaginative and creative tools that engage little ones before the minds of imagination. They help babies engage in pretend play, as they use their soft toys to act out different scenarios. Such play is very important in developing cognitive skills that enhance creativity, imagination, problem-solving skills, storytelling, and independent abstract thinking.

For example, a very simple stuffed animal might become a brave adventurer, a caring friend, or even a magical creature in the imagination of your baby. Such imaginative experiences develop critical thinking in the development of curiosity and creativity in your baby. 

4. Social Skills

Soft baby toys are the favorite play partners in pretend games where babies play a nurturing role, feeding their teddy bear or engaging in a conversation with their doll, imitating the actions that they see grown-ups doing in real life. Such role-play activities help build empathy and social relations, as well as early communication skills, both verbal and non-verbal.

A study revealed that many babies learned to express themselves by playing with soft toys, which served as a means of enhancing social cues. Talk to your baby throughout the role-play activity. Name the soft toys, describe their actions, and make certain scenarios and stories. This also helps with the development of language skills through vocabulary expansion.

Sharing soft toys with siblings or friends also builds social competence through learning valuable lessons about friendship and cooperation.

5. Physical Development

Soft toys are absolutely wonderful for encouraging physical development in babies. Grasping or squeezing a toy and transferring it from one hand to the other greatly strengthens the little muscles in their smaller hands and fingers, developing fine motor skills. Playing with these plush toys also encourages hand-eye coordination, and builds dexterity for future skills like writing and self-feeding.

Along with developing fine motor skills, larger soft toys can also support gross motor development as your little one crawls, reaches, or even takes their first steps in order to grab or carry them. Activities such as picking up, shaking, or throwing soft toys also strengthen other muscle groups, supporting a baby’s overall physical growth and coordination.

BENEFITS OF SOFT Baby TOYS

Comfort and Emotional Development

Soft toys often become a baby’s first friends, bringing comfort and companionship. Babies often talk to their toys, hug them, or even share their food with them, helping them explore and understand emotions and relationships. These interactions nurture empathy and compassion and develop the foundation for emotional intelligence. 

Soft toys can provide comfort to babies, especially when they are feeling upset or need to sleep. They also allow children to explore a range of emotions—happiness, anger, sadness, fear, and even jealousy—in a safe and imaginative way, aiding emotional expression and regulation.

Sensory development

Soft toys become a sensory treat for babies, with a myriad of textures to stimulate their touch. Smooth and silky surfaces, fluffy and bumpy textures- toys have their various textures with which the baby is introduced to the world of tactile differences. Tactile sensations help babies learn to distinguish hard from soft or rough from smooth. Brightly colored soft toys engage their visual senses, helping them recognize and differentiate hues with the additional auditory dimension provided by selected toys that make sounds during playtime.

Social Development

Soft toys can be instrumental in building social skills, as infants interact with them and with others during play. Pretend scenarios, such as “feeding” a stuffed animal or making it “talk,” mimic real-world interactions and allow babies to practice empathy and cooperation. In addition, if soft toys are shared with siblings or peers during play, valuable lessons in sharing, negotiation, and collaboration are taught. These early social encounters form a fertile ground for the building of meaningful relationships.

Language Development

Soft toys also aid in language development by encouraging babies to name and describe their toys or use imaginative dialogue. Talking about plush companions or role-playing scenarios encourages vocabulary growth while honing their communication skills. Other parent-facilitated activities might include narrating the baby’s actions or creating stories around soft toys, making playtime part of a language development system.

Cognitive Development

Engaging with soft toys allows healthy cognitive development that promotes exploration of cause-and-effect relationship. For instance, for babies, squeezing a squeaky toy or shaking a rattle helps them understand the effects of their actions. Soft toys also nurture creativity, as children imagine them as characters in their own narratives. This type of imaginative play fosters problem-solving, storytelling, and abstract thinking, essential for cognitive development.

Conclusion

Soft toys are timeless treasures and an adorable addition to your baby’s room and playtime. They serve as your little one’s first friend, and fluffy source of comfort. These little wonders are an essential part of your baby’s journey through early development. From developing creativity and social skills to providing comfort and emotional security, these plush treasures play a significant role in shaping your little one’s play world, building memories and happy moments.

Baby Cerelac Food is widely used by infants who transition to solids from breast milk or formula. This is a meal, or a kind of food, containing all the components required in the growth of a baby. With the babies’ growth, their appetite and therefore their feeding also varies with age.

Today in this blog we will discuss baby Cerelac food, how it is good and some controversies around it. 

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In this blog we will cover-  

• Nutritional Needs of Infants
• Stages of cerelac
• Recommended quantity
• Controversies around cerelac 

First of all let’s begin with 

Nutritional Needs of Infants

Aaround the age of 6 months most babies can safely incorporate solid food into their diet alongside breast milk/formula. Solid food makes a contribution towards fulfilling the significant dietary requirements for an active infant of this age. The calorie composition of diet of infants aged 6 months to 12 months is approximately includes the following on usual basis-

• Breast milk/formula: 24-32 ounces which is about 720-950 mL.
• Solid foods: 1 -2 meals at 6 months to 3 meals around 9 months.
• Snacks: 1-2 health consumption snacks by about 9 months of age.

Key Nutrients in Cerelac

Cerelac contains a high amount of nutrients needed for the healthy physical development of infants: 

• Iron: Very important in the development of the brain and reduces the risks of suffering from anaemia. 
• Calcium: Contributes to the proper growth of bones.  
• Vitamin C: It is important for normal immunity and also improves the uptake of iron. 
• Zinc: Important in growth and also immune defence system. 
• Proteins: For rebuilding body tissues and muscle development. 
• Carbohydrates: Supplies energy. 

Feeds of Cerelac variety are also designed not to be heavy for the stomach; hence, they can be conveniently given to infants who are just beginning to consume solid foods.

Stages of Baby Cerlac

Stage 1 – Baby Cerelac

Designed for infants aged 6-7 months, CERELAC Wheat, Rice, and Maize offer easy-to-digest cereals that are gelatin-free. You can introduce these as your baby’s first food at six months.

Stage 2 – Baby Cerelac

(7-8 months) can yet be given to babies from 7 months of age and comes in CERELAC Banana. 

Stage 3 – Baby Cerelac

(8-12 months) available as CERELAC 3 Fruits is available for infants from the age of 8 months and above. This is specially for infants who are about 8 months due to the ability to chew and vary tastes this cereal incorporates real fruit pieces to different textures for the babies.

Stage 4  – Baby Cerelac

(12 months to 18 months) suits babies who are proficient in eating solids and are willing to experiment with the family’s food . Stage 4 is available in multi-grain and fruits, multi-grain and Dal Veg and other varieties. The stage products have Bifidus BL probiotic Added which supports the healthy immune system of the baby and aids in his healthy growth and development too.

Stage 5 

(From 18 months to 2 years) has a mix of 5 grains and fruits combination which is produced with fruits in the texture appropriate for babies. Also added is wholegrain oats. The extra useful minerals, vitamins and fats helps the infant enough to not only gain nutrition and its taste but also gain health.

Reference- Stages

When to Begin Feeding Baby Cerelac 

Cerelac foods may be introduced to most babies who are about 6 months of age and show signs of development. The particular signs of readiness involve the following- 

• Ability to sit up with support
• Participating in eating activities 
• Refusal of the tongue-thrust reaction (pushing food out of the mouth)

Recommended Quantity

Serving Sizes for Infants 6–12 Months Old:

Age	Number of Meals	Portion Size
6 months	1 meal/day	1–2 tablespoons
7–8 months	2 meals/day	2–4 tablespoons
9–12 months	3 meals/day	4–6 tablespoons

Some Controversies around Baby Cerelac

The World Health Organization (WHO) actively recommends avoiding added sugars and sweeteners in foods for children under three years to reduce the risk of obesity.

For example, packaged foods like Cerelac, which are currently available in the market, have been widely available and trusted by parents in India for decades. However, in recent years, physicians have shifted their advice, encouraging parents to opt for healthier homemade options instead.

Reports highlight that Cerelac which is presently available, a baby food recommended for infants aged six months and above, contains 2.7 grams of added sugars per serving in India. In contrast, the same product is free of added sugars in the UK and Germany.

But why should this matter? The increase in overweight as well as obese children ranges between the ages of 0 to 5 years is of great concern in India. Although parents widely use Cerelac as a baby food product, use it carefully and always consult your child’s pediatrician for guidance.

Reference- Controversy

Conclusion

Baby Cerelac food is nutritionally balanced, safe, and convenient for introducing solid food into your baby’s diet. Cerelac provides essential nutrients, is easy to prepare, and supports growth during this critical developmental stage. However, the controversy surrounding its ingredients raises concerns. Therefore, consult your pediatrician before introducing any food item, and closely monitor your baby’s reaction to ensure it suits their needs.