Feeding Your Baby — 9-12 Months
Table Foods
By 9 to 12 months, your baby will already be fitting into your family’s eating schedule and will be eating family foods at the table.
During this Time Many Babies:
- Will eat with their fingers.
- Will start spoon feeding themselves with help.
- May begin to hold a cup by themselves.
- Will want to eat the same food the family eats.
Helpful Hints
- Table foods for Baby should be soft and easy to chew.
- Baby will be able to eat more and more foods from the table as more teeth come in.
- Baby will gradually get off strained and junior foods during this period. By 1 year of age, all of baby’s foods are usually from the table.
- Offer more and more formula in a cup. Baby should be gradually weaned from the bottle by 1 year of age or just a little after.
- Try to keep older children from sharing their drinks, sweets and chips with the baby.
- Always stay with Baby when he or she is eating.
- Don’t let Baby have hard, round foods.
- Baby can choke on foods such as popcorn, round candy, nuts, grapes and round slices of hot dogs. Be careful!
- Soft drinks, Kool-Aid, fruit punch and tea are NOT good drinks for Baby.
Here is a suggested way to give foods your baby needs each day:
Your baby will gradually take more and more formula from a cup. This menu suggests using a cup from lunch to bedtime. Gradually wean baby from the bottle by about 12 months old.
Food for a Day
- Four to six (or more) breastfeedings or 24 - 32 ounces of formula offered in a cup.
- Iron-fortified infant cereals: four to eight (or more) tablespoons after mixing with milk or formula.
- Bread and other grains: two to three servings (1/2 slice of bread is a serving).
- Infant juice or regular, 100 percent fruit or vegetable juices: four ounces per day only in a cup.
- Mashed or chopped cooked fruits and vegetables or junior fruits and vegetables: two servings of each a day, about four tablespoons per serving.
- Pureed or chopped lean meat, poultry, fish or egg yolk, cheese, yogurt or mashed beans: about two to eight tablespoons per day.
This page last updated on 7/31/07.