8 Month Old Foods

rice is probably ok I would also do bread and french fries. BUT NO CHOCOLATE THEY ARE NOT THE ONES DEALING WITH THE SUGAR HIGH. mac and cheese is probably ok. peanut butter sandwiches are probably ok. all of these things melt in the mouth. I wouldnt do much more than that. maybe oatmeal. but only things that will slide down or melt in the mouth.

My kids were eating table foods by this age. Rice, mashed potatoes, yams, steamed green beans, scrambled eggs, pancakes with jelly, any cubed fruits, avocado, baked chicken and fish. The only sweets I let them have once in a while were Nilla wafers and they kind of sucked on them until they were soft and got little nibbles off them. My kids didn't really have sweets until their first birthday cakes, so I know how you feel about the chocolate.
Letting them have some table foods, even if they don't have teeth is fine, in my opinion. My kids turned out fine and were really good eaters. I let them try a little of what we were having and they liked all of it. They hated jarred baby food so it worked out well for us, but all kids are different.
I would talk to your grandparents about what they're feeding her and ask that they don't give chocolate as you are wanting not to introduce sweets until her first birthday and after that, only in moderation.
My dad was a milk lover and even though she wasn't a year old, my daughter wanted to try some of grandpa's milk. She loved it. That's what she always drank at their house and she had no stomach problems or anything. It's okay to slowly introduce things, depending on the child.
My children, fortunately, have never had any food allergies of any kind either so there was no reason to withhold food from them.

Best wishes.

Your grandparents are showing you disrespect when they say you're being silly. Firmly, in a friendly tone of voice, ask them to stop saying that. Remind them that you're the parent and you're learning about foods and your baby. Not knowing or disagreeing is not being silly. I praise you for asking questions. If you think it'll help suggest to your grandparents that you want to know more about their beliefs surrounding food and that you'll consider what they suggest and that you'll decide whether or not to feed your baby what they've suggested. Tell them you'd appreciate them respecting your role as the baby's mother by feeding her only what you choose to feed her. That you'll respect their role as grandparents who've had more experience by considering their suggestions and information about them while making food decisions.

I agree with not feeding sweets. Once someone, whether a baby or an adult, develops a taste for sweets they crave sweets. Sweets are rarely nutritious and need to be saved for special occasions. Ice cream is somewhat nutritious and acceptable in small quantities for an older child. A baby in in a high speed developmental space and needs to have her calories be packed with nutrition. Ice cream is not packed with nutrition per calorie. It's too high in calories.

It's hard to understand the reasons behind food choices without some study in nutrition. For that reason, I suggest that referring to your doctor and nutritionists as the source of your choices can be very helpful. Read up on what foods are best for babies. You can google infant nutrition on the Internet and learn enough to guide you in your choices.

If your grandparents do not trust "experts" fall back on the statement, "I'm the mother and I get the final choice." Say it confidently and with the expectation that they will respect your choices. They may not. Don't fight with them. Just keep repeating the same words and over time they may get it. Or not. Unless your baby is taken care of by them every day you will still be her prime source of nutrition.

Be sure to praise them for being your baby's grandparents. I'm a grandparent and my daughter and I had some rough times because I felt that she was discounting my role as a grandparent. We eventually worked it out and here are some ideas that worked for us. She learned to say "thank you for the information. I'll think about what you said." She would frequently ask me questions to clarify my idea and thus show me that she was listening. When she decided she would often tell me why she'd made that decision. If I were giving her baby ice cream, she would tell me that many experts believe sweets are not good for a baby to have and that she'd decided to not give her baby any sweets until later. Please honor my plan."

Families often do not have boundaries which allow this sort of exchange. If your grandparents aren't able to accept that you are the one to decide what your baby eats, and if it's possible, I'd try to not have her visit at meal time. If you're there when they offer her ice cream accept a bowl for yourself. Perhaps allow her to lick your empty spoon occasionally if that will prevent a face off with the grandparents.

If they're your primary caretakers while you're working or frequently gone, then you may have to step back if they won't accept your boundaries. Then you'll have to decide how important feeding your baby your way is important.

Can you compromise and allow them to feed her table food but not sweets and junk food? If they smash the food up, she'll be able to gum in with saliva and then swallow it with no difficulty. It's unlikely that she'll choke but if she does, she will still be alright. If she gags often then I suggest that her swallowing reflex is not mature enough to handle solid food. Your grandparents should understand that.

Above all, you are not silly! Expect your grandparents and everyone else to treat you will respect. Stand firm when you tell them that you expect respect and silly is a disrespectful word. You are willing to discuss food with them but only as long as everyone respects everyone else.

Most of my generation and all of earlier generations only ate table food. Baby food was either not available or too expensive. Keep in mind that a baby's main source of nutrition up until they they're a year is breast milk or formula. Eating solids, even when pureed, is just practice for eating more later.

First off - VERY few babies with teeth have molars. Molars are used for chewing. Most babies with teeth have only a few front teeth -- those are for taking bites off (then they move food to back of mouth and gum them to chew). Babies can gum pretty much anything.

Second - an 8 month old can have pretty much anything except honey (boutulism) and maybe peanuts -- but the most recent studies show that in countries where they don't delay the intro to nuts/peanuts, the rate of allergies is WAY lower than in countries where it's common to delay. Most of the allergy studies done in the past few years say there's no need to delay on certain foods. It used to be common to wait until month x for meat, or month y for eggs. Not anymore. If a kid is going to have an allergy to a food, he's going to have it regardless if you introduce that food at 6 months or 11 months.

As for 'table foods' - none of my kids ever had 'baby food'. They were eating oatmeal, smashed bananas and avacados, rice, cheerios, etc as soon as they started solid foods around 5-6 months. By 8 months, they were eating whatever the rest of the family was eating at that meal. We just cut everything up into pea-sized bits and put a small pile on their plate so they could pick it up with their fingers and feed themselves. The bigger variety of food (tastes and textures) they have before their 1st birthday, the less likely they will be picky eaters and have 'food issues' as preschoolers.

And just so you know, none of my kids had a single tooth before their 1st birthday! And none ever choked or gagged.

I would draw the line at chocolate and candy for a baby, though. That's just silly. Put your foot down on that one. But then again, if the grandparents don't see the child very often, a bite of chocolate a few times a year certainly isn't going to hurt in anyway. I'm a bit more relaxed on certain rules when my kids see the grandparents who live far away and we see twice a year than the set of grandparents who live a few hours away and we see a few times a month.

my youngest daughter just turned 10 months old and even now I limit what she can have. I have family trying to give her something new and I just tell them that I'm waiting on that food till later. with my older daughter turning 3 I really stayed away from sweets and candy and Its been really good. She doesn't wine or act out at the checkout stand begging for candy. I still keep hers limited.

It was actually funny on my oldest daughters 1st birthday when I gave her a little cake of her own. At first trying a bite of it she tasted it, stopped and looked and me and gave a funny face. Up till that point she'd had hardly anything super sweet like cake and frosting.

I'd just recommend giving gentle reminders to your family that you'd rather wait on giving her other types of food till later. Good luck.

Are your grandparents keeping her all the time or is your daughter just with them occasionally? If it is occasional, I'd just keep the peace. If she's with them a lot...I'd be a little more concerned.

I don't think there is anything wrong with an occasional treat for KIDS, but babies have absolutely no need of sweets or other junk. My daughter was just tasting food still at 8 months...she was exclusively breastfed and didn't get her first tooth until a weeks or so before her first birthday.

As far as I am concerned, anything that goes in an 8 month old's mouth should have a purpose. You could use the old, "the doctor said..." argument...but chances are that your grandparents will just say that the doctor doesn't know!

Rice is fine, many table foods are fine, but I'd skip the sweets for now (and for another year or more!!). I hardly used jarred foods except when traveling. As long as you wait until 6 months old to start solids, they never needs the watered-down purees and bland cereal. You can mash up table food, you can run things like cooked apples and sweet potatoes through the blender, you can give mashed bananas and avacado...lots of regular food! We're the only culture that pays like 500% mark-up on watered-down foods with preservatives in them :P It's convenient but totally unnecessary!
Tell G&G that sharing bits of food is fine, but no sweets :)

As long as she can chew it, and it's not on the "no-no list" from your pediatrician, she should be able to eat table foods.
When my son was 8 months old, he started noticing that he was eating different foods than the rest of us, and began to protest. So I did as best as I could to find things that were similar for him to eat, and just mashed or used a blender on them so he could eat them. My pediatrician said that as long as things aren't on the wait list (like peanut butter), he could try just about anything. Plus, they said the more different things they experience early on, the easier it is to get them to eat diverse things later.
My suggestion for dealing with the grandparents would be to provide things you DO want your daughter to eat, and just remind them (nicely) that she is your daughter and that they need to respect your parenting choices. However, letting your daughter try different foods can be great as long as they aren't something that's going to harm her.

I feel your concern about the chocolate and sweets. My parents do the same thing and it drives me crazy. I just really limit that kind of stuff at home since I know others are giving it to my children even if I don't want them too. As for eating table food, I believe 8 months is appropriate for table food as long as her digestive tract can handle it. Eggs and cooked vegetables are perfect foods. My husband and I bought a food processor so if we ate a roast, carrots and potatoes for dinner, so did our children. We would put it all together in the blender, turn it into mush and they loved it. It was nice cutting down on the amount of baby food we had to buy also. I should also add that my son had a few teeth at that age, while my daughter did not have any teeth. The strange thing is that my daughter was and still is the better eater of the two of them.