Baby Not Eating? Feeding & Weaning Help in Gurgaon

Around six months, and the calendar is only half of it. The World Health Organization recommends starting complementary foods at about six months while breastfeeding continues. Look for the readiness signs alongside the date: sitting with support, steady head control, and real interest in what is on your plate. Starting before a baby can sit or hold their head steady is what turns first meals into a fight.

Single-ingredient home-prepared foods, with iron among them from the beginning — a baby's own iron stores run down around six months. Good first foods are well-mashed dal, ragi porridge, soft khichdi, mashed sweet potato or banana, and, when you are ready, finely minced meat or mashed egg yolk. Offer a vitamin C source such as tomato or citrus alongside plant-based iron to help absorption. Introduce one new food at a time so a reaction is easy to spot.

Food refusal is common and most of it passes. Offer the same food again on other days without pressure, because it often takes eight or ten calm exposures before a baby accepts it. Keep milk feeds and meals far enough apart that your baby comes to the spoon hungry, let them hold the spoon or the food themselves, and eat alongside them. Refusal that lasts more than a few days, or arrives with weight that has stopped moving, is worth having looked at rather than waited out.

Gagging is a normal protective reflex when a baby meets a new texture, and it usually settles with practice. What is not routine is gagging or retching at most meals, or no progress past smooth purees by around ten months. Bring that in: the paediatrician looks first for a medical cause such as reflux, anaemia or a swallowing problem. If the trouble turns out to be the mechanics of eating rather than the medicine, that is what feeding therapy is for, and we refer you to an occupational therapist or speech-language pathologist who does it.

A paediatrician first, in almost every case. Which professional your baby needs depends on what is driving the trouble, and that is a medical question before it is a food question. We examine your baby, review the feed and the weight pattern together, treat what we find, and refer you on to a registered dietitian or a feeding therapist when the answer turns out not to be us. The triage table higher up this page sets out who does what.

Early rather than late. Current evidence favours offering egg and peanut in the first year instead of delaying them, but the form matters: egg well cooked, and peanut thinned into a smooth paste, never whole nuts or a spoonful of thick butter. Offer one new allergen at a time, at home and earlier in the day, so a reaction is easy to spot. If your baby has severe eczema or a known food allergy, ask us before the first try. Swelling of the lips or face, widespread hives or noisy breathing after a food is an emergency: go straight to the nearest hospital emergency department, or call an ambulance on 102, rather than phoning us.

Yes, and you should. Breast milk stays your baby's main source of nutrition through the first year, with foods added around it rather than replacing it. WHO recommends breastfeeding to two years and beyond alongside family foods. Weaning, in the clinical sense, means adding foods and not stopping milk, and we can help you time meals and feeds so the two do not compete.