snacks for a 9 month old

[FrogTime]

Hi

We've been advised to cut down on bottles and do more in the way of snacks. What do you feed a 9 month old in snacks that can be given in pram when out and about (when we'd usually stop for some milk)?

Thanks

At his age he needs more solid food than milk, are you weaning him?

Usually I would have taken them out of pram and given some food like avocado or rice and chicken etc, or some Greek yogurt.

Otherwise some cubes of cheese, cucumber slices, blueberries, banana. Most again out of pram as I wouldn't want pram needing cleaning daily from food smears or crumbs

We do mostly bananas (he's obsessed). Occasional baby biscuit and the melty puff things that Ella's Kitchen do (which he's even more obsessed with...). Breadsticks are another option as well. We struggle a bit with interesting snack options - just got back from a week in France where DS spent the entirety of his pushchair time with a piece of baguette in his hand like a little French baby!

Why have you been told to cut down on milk? Under one most calories should still come from breast milk or formula.

We used things like low salt or homemade oat cakes as emergency food at that age, if giving a bottle wasn't really feasible.

Some great ideas thank you!

DD will still be having formula just not as much (keeping the morning and evening ones) and she has three meals a day. HV just said to give even more solid food to gradually wean off formula for when she's 1yo.

Bananas and yoghurts are a favourite here. My friend used to give grated cheese to help with her dd's fine motor skills, which I think is quite clever.

As well as some of the above: Raisins, Babybels, homemade porridge fingers (v easy to do), boiled carrot sticks, cream crackers, rich tea biscuit, sandwich fingers (cream cheese/ peanut butter/ hummus/ grated carrot), tangerine segments and the usual Ellas/ Organix snacks occasionally too.

Brioche

I have always been a bit wary of too much banana as it can cause constipation in many small children

Bananas are also high in potassium so don't let them have more than one or two a day.

I've steered away from banana for a while because last time she had it she came out in a rash on her face. Bought some rice cakes to try, fingers crossed she likes them!

My little girl is seven months. I have struggled with balancing still giving the right amount of milk and weaning at the same time. My HV said they should still be having around 500mls (about 20oz) of formula/ breast milk a day but that some of this can come from snacks and the whole milk she now has in food. For example I make her porridge on a morning with about 50ml of whole milk. Cheese and yogurt is also included in this. The reason why milk is still so important is due to the calcium so as long as they're receiving lots of calcium rich snacks it doesn't matter if some days she only has 400ml of formula. For snacks I always keep some of the Organix crisps in the cupboard, plus some fruit puree pots although we now only rarely use these. Sticks of cheese are good, soreen, a banana, most supermarkets do baby and toddler friendly fruit packets like mango or melon cut into strips. Anyway hope this helps.

Agree on the bananas and constipation, so DS is generally limited to one a day. Apparently it's less likely to happen if they're ripe bananas though (yeah, I know far too much about the intricacies of baby poo...!).

cucumber sticks or strips of pepper

Apples are a big favourite of my 9 month old.