Your baby is almost turning six months old, and you are thinking about what to feed your growing child. When weaning a baby, you ought to give your 6-month old child solid foods that can digest easily. Such foods should be soft and nutritious.
Most parents tend to offer their babies mashed and pureed fruits as their first solid foods. Fruits contain nutrients that are essential for your child’s growth and development. Your baby’s body cannot synthesize most of these nutrients.
Different fruits provide a wide range of essential nutrients such as Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Vitamin B, Vitamin A, fiber, iron, folate, and calcium. Fruits with such nutrients include mango, avocado, banana, watermelon, strawberry, pear, and apple. Here are some of the reasons why your baby needs fruits.
- Boosts Brain Development
Fruits such as avocadoes contain unsaturated fats that can improve your baby’s brain development. The fruits can be mashed easily and digested quickly in the baby’s stomach.
- Boosts the Baby’s Immunity
Fruits contain essential nutrients such as Vitamin C and Vitamin E that plays a significant role in promoting your baby’s immunity. As a caring mother, you need to offer fruits to your baby regularly to help the body fight diseases.
- Improves Health Conditions
Fruits such as blueberries contain various nutrients that can provide protection against diseases such as digestion and vision problems. Some fruits help in reducing the risks of diabetes.
- Removes Body Toxins
Fruits such as apples, blueberries, and cantaloupe contain essential nutrients and elements that help the body to remove toxins from the child’s body.
- Provides Energy
Fruits such as bananas contain sugars which are a good source of energy. By feeding on fruits regularly, your baby can be more energetic.
- Prevents Obesity
Unlike junk foods, fruits contain fewer calories that can maintain the healthy body weight of your baby. Ensure that the baby eats fruits regularly rather than foods with many calories. Generally, fruits have high nutritional value that is good for your baby’s health. Fruits can facilitate potassium intake in your baby’s body. Also, fruits have no cholesterols and are heart-friendly.
By offering your baby fruits regularly, the baby will not have digestion problems. That is because most fruits have high fiber content. To maximize all the benefits of fruits, you should offer your baby a variety of fruits. Now that you understand the benefits of fruits let’s take a look at how to offer these fruits to your child using a baby fruit feeder.
Feeding Your Child Using a Baby Fruit Feeder
A baby fruit feeder is an excellent accessory that you can use to introduce solid foods such as fruits to your baby. With this feeder, you don’t have to hold it in your baby’s mouth. All you need to do is to fill it with mashed fruit and allow your baby to carry it while feeding.
What is a Baby Fruit Feeder?
A baby fruit feeder consists of a perforated container where you can place mashed or cubed fruit pieces. The feeder has a lid for enclosing its content and a small handle that can fit into your baby’s hands. Additionally, the feeder has a cap surrounding the perforated container with fruits.
Types of Baby Fruit Feeders
Depending on the material of the perforated container, baby fruit feeders exist in two forms. The two types include;
- Silicone Baby Fruit Feeder: Consists of a perforated plastic container that is made of high-quality silicone. Cleaning this type of feeder is easy.
- Mesh Baby Fruit Feeder: The container where fruits are placed is a meshed bag. The netted bag has more space than the silicone fruit feeder.
How to Use the Baby Fruit Feeder
Once you have mashed fruit such as a banana, open the feeder’s lid and place the fruit inside the meshed bag or the perforated silicone container. Note that the fruit should be solid or semi-solid but not liquid. Sometimes you do not have to mash the fruit, especially if your baby already knows how to chew. All you need to do is to slice fruit into small pieces and place them in the perforated feeder. You can now give it to your baby to feed without your help.
By allowing your child to self-feed, the baby will learn how to chew. Most likely, your baby will enjoy every new fruit you will be offering. Baby fruit feeders are one of the best ways of introducing solid foods to your baby.
Importance of a Baby Fruit Feeder
Now, let’s delve a bit deeper into the benefits of using the baby fruit feeder to introduce solid foods to your baby’s diet.
- Encourages Self Feeding
Baby fruit feeders have small handles that a baby can hold and self-feed without the help of the parent. Using a fruit feeder to feed your baby is a healthy way of getting your child fed rather than using spoons.
- Encourages Chewing Practice
At six months of age, a baby should start learning how to chew. A baby fruit feeder is a perfect tool to keep your baby’s jaw muscles strong. By chewing the perforated bag with fruit, the baby enjoys the sweetness and chews more to extract the fruit juice.
- Keeps Your Baby Busy
Allowing your baby to self-feed is a good way of keeping your baby busy especially when you are doing some house chores. You don’t have to sit and feed the baby.
- Encourages Solid Foods Consumption
Feeding your kid with the baby fruit feeder is an exciting way to get the baby used to solid foods. The baby food feeder provides a safe way of solid food consumption.
- Relieves Teething Pain
Teething is a process that is paining in a baby’s development. To reduce the pain, you can fill the feeder with frozen fruits that will soothe the baby’s teething gums.
Final Word
When choosing a baby fruit feeder, you need to select the one which will suit your baby’s needs. Both the silicone and mesh baby feeders serve the same purpose. However, they vary in a few areas.
For instance, when it comes to ease of cleaning, the silicone baby fruit feeder is the best. When it comes to size, the mesh baby feeder is bigger than the silicone baby feeder. Therefore, you ought to choose that which you can efficiently manage.
Related Links:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_food /By Wikipedia
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_nutrition /By Wikipedia
- https://www.wikihow.com/Get-Your-Children-to-Eat-their-Vegetables-and-Fruits /By Wikihow
- https://www.wikihow.com/Care-for-a-Baby /By Wikihow