Time Saving Baby Food Recipes
Homemade Baby Food Recipes for
Work-at-Home Moms Who Run a Home Business
Wholesome recipes made with organic foods to help keep your baby healthy and happy ...and as every working Mom knows... when the "boss" is happy you're able to focus on other things, including your Home Business
On this page we'll discuss feeding your baby from newborn to 6 months. On the lower half of the page we'll talk about when to start your baby on solid foods - and what foods to try first. I'm a firm believer in homemade baby food, and I hope you will be too after you read the information and recipe ideas presented in these pages.
There are links to other pages where you will find baby food recipes for fruit, vegetables and complete meals for older babies.
Homemade baby food made with organic foods, properly prepared, is far superior to anything you can buy in the store, and very easy to make at home. Making your baby's food at home, in addition to providing superior nutrition, gives you the peace of mind in knowing that you'll never run out.
Peace of mind about family affairs is a definite plus when you have a busy home based business to run. It means you can concentrate on your business when you need to, knowing that the other areas of your life are under control.
See Time Management for Work-at-Home Parents for some ideas about organizing your day.
Having your own home business and working at home after your baby is born gives you a great deal of flexibility. But it can also be a stressful time if you're a new parent. These pages endeavour to ease your stress and give you the ability to balance caring for your baby and running your home business by giving helpful information and recipe ideas for homemade baby food to keep your little one happy and comfortable.
When Baby's happy, Mom can do other things - like spend some time developing the home business.
Click the links below to be taken to more baby food recipes and information on the best foods to use, and how to properly prepare them to preserve the nutrients. These recipes are suitable for babies 6 to 9 months, and 9 months up.
Your baby deserves the best you can give, so start off with the baby food recipes you find on this site and then create your own homemade baby food based on your own knowledge, ideas, and your baby's preferences.
Your baby will enjoy fresh, highly nutritious foods, lovingly prepared. You will have the peace of mind knowing that he's getting the best nourishment. Plus... you'll save time and money, and be able to give your home business the attention you need to.
So read on and ... Enjoy!!
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Navigate This page:
Feeding Your Baby - a general discussion
Rice Cereal Recipe for Baby
About water and juices
Cutest Kid of the Year Contest - win $25,000 for your baby's college tuition fund
Related pages:
Time Saving Baby Food Recipes starting at 6 months
Your Baby's Meals - 9 months to one year
Family Recipe Index
BACK to Family Dinners
BACK to Nutrition Basics
BACK to Family Meal Plans and Menus
Time Management for Work-at-Home Parents
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Feeding Your Baby - A General Discussion
The care and feeding of your baby can be both pleasurable and daunting. He can't tell you what he likes. She can't tell you if a particular food makes the tummy hurt. All they can do is scream and make you feel guilty and bewildered. What's a mother to do? Don't worry. Take heart. It's not so bad.
Most of the commercially produced baby foods on the market these days are acceptable, but to be absolutely certain it's 100% safe, not overprocessed, and contains the nutrients his growing body needs -- Cook It Yourself!
It's really quite easy and very rewarding. Here you will find some baby food recipes I used when my children were babies, and I'll indicate the ages at which each food group was introduced. I'll tell you what adverse reactions to look for and some safety measures to follow to keep your baby safe from allergies and contaminants.
This will be short, sweet and to the point. The recipes are presented without too much preamble so you can get to cooking quickly. But if you want to delve deeper, there are websites where you can find lots more in-depth information. One example is www.homemade-baby-food-recipes.com which, just by the way, is an internet-based home business built by a work-at-home Mom using SiteBuildIt!. You might want to check it out.
Breastfeeding is absolutely the best thing for your newborn, and since you can't see how much he's taking, he'll be on a "demand" schedule rather than a timed one. This means you'll probably have little time for much else in the early weeks, until your baby schedules himself.
It's demanding and restricting, but do it. It's worth the inconvenience. Your milk has natural antibodies which protect your little one from infections during the first few critical months, and the bonding that results from this contact with your baby is priceless.
Try to do this for at least the first six months, ideally for a year, if you possibly can. You won't regret it.
If you have to go back to work -- and I hope you'll give the Work at Home Mom page a look and find something worth pursuing as a home-based business so you won't have to -- but if you do have to return to work, express your milk as soon as you come home from work, place in his sterilized bottles, and store in the refrigerator for the next day.
By the time he's ready for the bedtime feeding, you should have enough milk for nursing, as pumping will cause more milk to come in. This way, your little one will still have the advantage of being a breastfed baby, even if it comes from a bottle, and you will maintain your supply.
During the first month, if your baby seems not to be getting enough breast milk and wakes often because he's hungry, I suggest pumping in between his feedings. The more milk you express, the more you will produce. If you're still not producing enough to satisfy his appetite, you can supplement with carefully selected formula. Consult with your pediatrician about this.
When your baby is about three months old, you might want to start introducing cereal at the night feeding so he won't get hungry too soon. This will encourage sleeping through. Cereals take longer to digest and will help your baby to start sleeping through the night.
The cereal least likely to cause allergic reactions is rice, so start with that - a few tablespoons added to the milk or formula at first and increasing gradually. I suggest using a good baby food recipe and cooking this yourself. Put it through the blender to make it smooth enough to pass through the nipple. Of course the nipple's hole should be enlarged in order to facilitate this, but be careful. You don't want too much coming out all at once. If the flow is too rapid, the baby is likely to gag and possibly vomit. Not pleasant for either of you.
Baby's taste buds are not yet fully developed so flavorings are not really necessary at this point. Don't even consider using sugar or salt in his cereal at first. Natural foods have enough sodium to satisfy the body's needs, and refined sugar will just set him up for being a sugar junkie later in life. Wait for a few months before you start flavoring his food.
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Baby's First Homemade Food
Rice Cereal
1 Cup parboiled or brown rice, quickly washed in cold water. You don't want to prolong the washing as this will dissolve the nutrients into the washing water, especially Vitamin B which is water soluble and easily lost.
Parboiled or brown rice is recommended because they aren't overprocessed so more nutrients are present in these than in white rice... more in brown than parboiled, but some brown rices take a long time to cook, so I chose parboiled. You decide which works best for you.
Place in a clean stainless steel or ceramic saucepan, add 1 cup water and 1 cup evaporated milk. Cook, simmering, over medium to low heat until soft. Cool and process in your sterilized blender container.
At first you may prefer to mix the cereal with expressed breast milk or the baby's formula. This way you only introduce one new food into the diet, so if there are any problems, you will immediately know the cause. If you want to do this, cook the rice in plain water and add the milk or formula when you put it into the blender. Process on "liquefy".
My children preferred their bottle warm... actually they didn't know any different, they didn't have a choice. I found that this helped them expel the gas and digest it better. But some babies prefer room temp and some will even drink it cold. Whatever her preference is OK, although I would encourage the warm or at least body temperature at this stage.
Give one cereal bottle a day to start -- at the 10 p.m. feeding to encourage sleeping through the night. After a couple of weeks, if the baby does well but still seems hungry between feedings of milk or formula only, you can replace one of the earlier feedings with another cereal bottle. I'd limit it to two at this point.
Until your baby starts sleeping through the night, you're going to be tired and stressed. Learn to take time out for yourself. Sleep when he sleeps and
take an all natural supplement to help you relax. If you're breastfeeding, remember to check with your pediatrician before taking any supplement, natural or otherwise.
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You should continue with breast feedings or formula -- whichever your baby is on -- for as long as you can, ideally through the first year, and hold off on introducing other solids until your baby is at least 6 months.
You want him on the breast for as long as it's comfortable and feasible for you both (assuming, of course, that you are making sure that you are well nourished, eating proper, well balanced meals yourself, and drinking adequate amounts of water and other nourishing liquids such as soups, fresh fruit and vegetable juices).
If you take great care to eat well, your breastfed baby shouldn't have any digestive problems.
However, should he develop constipation, colic, diarrhea or vomiting, here are a few things you can do to alleviate the symptoms, after consulting with your pediatrician.
- Constipation:
- Give a little prune or pear juice diluted with 1 oz boiled cooled water
- Give natural brown sugar dissolved in boiled water, cooled to just above body temperature
- Gently massage around the baby's navel in a circular pattern with a little warmed baby oil
- Diarrhea, colic, nausea and vomiting: Give Baby Gripe Water, available at your local Walgreen's or here
Breast milk from a well-nourished mother supplies everything your baby needs to keep him healthy from newborn through the first six months. If supplementation is needed, the addition of one cereal and/or formula should adequately supply his needs until he's six months old.
I let Nature guide me as to when to introduce spoon fed solids -- when the teeth start to come in. But be warned -- Teething is a miserable time for babies, so your little one may balk at the idea of eating from a spoon, but eventually she'll discover that the spoon can be chewed upon and that relieves some of the teething pain and helps the teeth to break through. Make sure baby's first spoon is the soft padded kind.
At six months, you can start introducing different cereals, fruit and vegetables, one at a time, every two weeks or so.
Introducing new foods one at a time makes it easier to identify the culprit should your baby exhibit an allergic reaction. Offer the new food before the bottle or nursing, while baby's still hungry. Just a few spoonsful at a time so he's not too full to take the milk or formula. You want him to still be hungry enough for his milk, which is where the bulk of his nourishment is, at this point.
As time goes by, if the foods are well digested and your baby is thriving, you can let him eat a full serving if he wants it, and then follow with a bottle or the breast. This procedure works best between 6 and 9 months.
Clicking the links below will give you more information on homemade baby food recipes for babies 6 months to 1 year plus a timeline for introducing new foods.
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What About Water and Fruit Juice?
Pediatricians today have conflicting opinions about babies and water. Most feel it is unnecessary for infants up to 3 months old to be given water. But back in the days of our mothers and grandmothers, babies were given 1 to 2 ozs of boiled cooled water each day with no ill effects. The human body is made up of approx. 70% to 80% water, so it would seem logical that all humans need to drink some each day to maintain the proper balance.
My grandsons' pediatrician says that breast milk and/or formula adequately supplies the baby's water needs, but my experience with this is that when you live in warm climates, everyone needs to drink water daily, even the baby. I gave my Jamaican and Floridian babies boiled cooled water in small amounts with no ill effects. However, I am not a doctor... just a Mom who raised four very healthy children and who is just sharing her experiences with you.
So be guided by your local climate, your doctor and your own instincts. Watch for signs of constipation and dehydration in your baby. An ounce or two is all that is needed to help prevent constipation and other symptoms of dehydration. Keep in mind, it doesn't take much for a baby to become dehydrated and constipation is one of the indicators.
A coated tongue is one of the indicators of constipation. If baby's tongue isn't regularly cleaned, especially if he isn't drinking water, this can lead to thrush - a mild but annoying yeast infection. Clean the baby's tongue with sterilized cotton wrapped around your finger and dipped into cooled boiled water.
Begin regularly offering boiled cooled water or fruit juice diluted with boiled water when your baby starts eating solid foods on a regular basis. Start with freshly squeezed, strained orange juice or apple juice and dilute 1/2 and 1/2 with boiled water. About 2 to 4 ounces juice or water daily should be adequate. If the weather is particularly hot, you may offer more if she accepts it.
Don't worry if your baby refuses to drink at first. As with everything new, she'll get used to the taste as time goes on. Don't be tempted to sweeten her water to make it more palatable. Back in the day, Moms used to put a little honey in the water to encourage the baby to drink, but we now know that honey, although high in nutrients, can be a source of infant botulism, a form of food poisoning, so hold off on the honey at least until your baby is past two years old. Also, if she gets used to sweet liquids from the bottle, she may start to refuse her milk or formula.
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Baby Food Recipes starting at 6 months
Baby's Meals 9 mths to one year
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