Right from birth, you can help your child develop healthy eating habits.

Newborn

Start to learn your baby's cues for hunger and fullness. Offer to breastfeed, or if not breastfeeding, offer a bottle when your baby is showing signs of hunger.

From 6 months

You will be feeding your baby solid foods along with breastfeeding or feeding from a bottle. When you are offering solid foods, the following signs will indicate if your baby is hungry or full.

Hungry

• Opening mouth when offered food on a spoon
• Showing interest in eating
• Leaning towards food/spoon
• Sucks hands or smacks lips

Full

• Pushes spoon away
• Keeps mouth closed
• Upset or disinterested
• Spits food out
• Turns head away
• Covers mouth with hands

When feeding your baby, it is important to remember to work as a team! You both have important jobs to do!

You decide what you offer your baby to eat.

Trust your baby to decide how much they want to eat – if they want to eat at all. 

It is important to respect when your baby refuses food — never force feed and never withhold food.

Remember, it is normal for mealtimes to be messy. By playing with food, babies learn about textures, tastes, colours and the foods they like and don't like. Babies love to explore their food — this is how they learn.

Babies and children can be picky eaters. Although this can be frustrating and worrisome for parents, as long as your child is continuing to grow, there is usually nothing to worry about. Babies and toddlers have small stomachs and often fill up faster than adults expect. Be careful though — if your older baby (after 12 months) or toddler is drinking too much milk, juice or other drinks, they may not be hungry at mealtimes.

To ask a Registered Dietitian questions about feeding your baby or toddler, call EatRight Ontario at 1-877-510-5102.

Additional Resources:

A complete listing of all fact sheets and resources on feeding your baby during the first year is available on the Nutrition Services Fact Sheets and Resources Page. Many of the fact sheets and resources are available in English and in a variety of other languages.

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