What Food To Give Your Baby From 8 To 12 Months

By 8 or 9 months, you can start to offer your baby their solids before breast milk or formula. By now your baby is probably having 3 to 4 meals a day, 1 to 2 snacks, and 2 to 3 breast (or formula) feeds.

By the time your baby is 12 months, they're ready to eat a little of what the rest of the family is eating but remember to be careful about foods that can cause choking.

Grated cheese and carrot, vegetables (kumara, potato, broccoli), plates of soft cooked vegetables and fruit, toast fingers, wheat biscuits, mandarin segments, glasses of pasta, rice, plain yoghurt, baby muesli, bowls of raw meat and legumes

Try mashed vegetables mixed with minced or finely chopped tender cooked meat, chicken, kai moana, egg or slightly mashed cooked legumes (such as lentils). You could also add chopped up noodles or pasta or whole rice.

Vegetables (kumara, potato, pumpkin, broccoli), bowls of raw meat and legumes, eggs, glasses of pasta and rice

Add chopped soft fruit to yoghurt or custard.

Glass of plain yoghurt surrounded by plates of chopped soft fruit

Offer breakfast cereal - porridge, wheat biscuits and infant muesli.

Wheat biscuits and infant muesli

Introduce slightly firmer finger foods such as: soft ripe fruit or soft cooked vegetables such as kiwifruit or kūmara; finely grated raw carrot and apple; toast fingers; puffed crispbread.

Grated carrot, grated cheese, grated apple and toast fingers

Platter of soft fruit and vegetable pieces

Call PlunketLine on 0800 933 922 for parenting advice, including advice about feeding your baby.

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What Food To Give Your Baby From 8 To 12 Months