10 Month Old Meal Ideas

“What my 10 Month Old Eats in a Day”

I always enjoy getting meal ideas from other moms. So I thought I’d share a few meal ideas myself in hopes of helping or inspiring other moms.

It can be hard coming up with new ideas and a variety of foods. I try hard to expose our son to as many different flavors and textures as possible. He has been such a good eater from day one. I really want these good eating habits to continue. 

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Plant Based Focus

Additionally, we limit meat and dairy – as a family. I wouldn’t consider our family to be true vegans by any means, but we like to eat as plant based as possible. We eat lots of fruits and veggies and beans and legumes – with some wild game and fish in the mix. 

Do you know how many easy baby and toddler foods are centered around dairy!? A LOT! When you look at mainstream meal ideas, there is so much dairy! It can be challenging to come up with new dairy free ideas sometimes!

Still Breastfeeding

My 10 month old still nurses 4 times a day (when he wakes in the morning, after both naps and before bed). Sometimes he will nurse 3 times a day and I offer 6-8 oz of thawed breastmilk in a straw cup at lunch time.

I typically nurse him prior to a meal. Its not always immediately before a meal, but I have the mindset that I would rather him fill up on milk than food. Babies still receive most of their nutrition from breastmilk or formula at this age – up until 12 months of age. With our schedule this works out for him to nurse when he wakes up from a nap and then gives me a little bit of time to prep his meal. Sometimes, when I’m really on my game, I meal prep during his nap so its ready to go when he wakes up and finished nursing.

A Good Eater

We didn’t really follow baby led weaning. I made A LOT of pureed baby food when he was just a few months old to stash away in the freezer. He started eating baby food around 4 1/2 – 5 months of age, when he started showing a little interest in what we were eating. He loved all baby food. ALL the food!! I’m talking – didn’t make a face with any foods we gave him. Even green vegetables!!

As he started to show more interest in exactly what WE were eating (ie. reaching for our plates), we slowly introduced table foods. He was also showing us signs of being developmentally ready – with head control, pincer grasp and getting up onto all fours on the floor. 

Since our son had such good pincer grasp, I never went the actual baby led weaning route. Instead of cutting foods into finger sized pieces, I cut everything up into bite sized pieces. He loved this independence of self feeding, but still enjoyed downing his baby food too.

Eating Family Meals

Fast forward a few months, and we have a 10 month old that eats primarily table foods. More importantly, he typically eats the same foods we eat during a meal. This makes my life as “the cook” so much easier!! 

As a pediatric occupational therapist, I’ve also heard the pediatric speech therapists endlessly say “Don’t be a short order cook.” Basically, if your child doesn’t like what’s for dinner, don’t scramble to cook their favorites. They quickly learn to protest the veggies and end up with dinosaur chicken nuggets instead. 

It’s great to try and lay down those basic foundations now. Basic foundations of the whole family eating together and eating the same foods. You never know what all a baby is soaking up and perceiving at such a young age. And again, trying to expose your baby to a variety of food flavors and textures.

I still cut everything up into bite sized pieces. But I always try to give our son some of whatever foods we are eating. This is fairly easy since we eat all meals at home and I cook from scratch. Often times, I keep out some of the foods before adding salt and seasonings. Babies’ bodies still don’t process salts and heavy seasonings very well at this age.

What about snacks?

My son doesn’t often have a snack, because it doesn’t quite fit in with meals and naps. But if he seems to be hungry in between meals, I offer something simple such as puffs or a teething cracker. I often provide him with 2 options to make his own choice. He’s so cute looking back and forth between the 2, trying to decide which one he wants this time.

I’m also planning on making frozen yogurt bites with a non-dairy yogurt sometime soon. I’ll be sure to share how I make them and how my son likes them! That would make another great snack option.

Sample Meal Ideas

I just decided to jot down what our son ate for 3 days. This is really what he ate for 3 consecutive days. I hope to share more meal ideas in the future or maybe a whole week of meal ideas.

DAY ONE

Breakfast:

• 1 Scrambled egg
• 2 Banana Amaranth Pancakes (see recipe)
• Water in straw cup

Lunch:

• 5 Organic Whole Wheat Crackers with classic hummus
• 25 blueberries
• 2 Cherries
• ¼ Avocado
• Water in straw cup

Dinner:

• Family dinner – stir fry (I keep out a few cubes of tofu before adding seasoning/sauce, but I grab veggies to cut up smaller from the pan after its seasoned with onions, garlic and ginger)
• 3 cubes of tofu
• Diced carrots, zucchini, broccoli
• Water in straw cup

DAY TWO

Breakfast:

• ½ cup of baby oatmeal with strawberries (more ideas for baby oatmeal)
• 2 Banana Amaranth Pancakes (see recipe)
• Water in straw cup

Lunch:

• 1 boiled egg
• ¼ c mango
• 2 homemade broccoli fritters with small smear of peanut butter (because broccoli isn’t his favorite)
• Water in straw cup

Dinner:

• Family dinner – sourdough skillet with ground venison, carrots, onions, corn, peas 
• Get this deliciously easy recipe at Farmhouse on Boone
• Water in straw cup

DAY THREE

Breakfast:

• 1 Scrambled egg
• ½ c oatmeal with ½ mashed banana and cinnamon (more ideas for baby oatmeal)
• Water in straw cup

Lunch:

• ½ toasted peanut butter sandwich
• ½ banana
• 2 prunes
• Water in straw cup

Dinner:

• Family dinner – quinoa bowls
• 3 oz homemade spinach apple baby food with quinoa added
• Black beans, Corn, Avocado (approx. 2-3 Tbsp ea)
• Water in straw cup

Feeding Tools

We love the easy to hold and no-choke design of this spoon and fork. And as a pediatric occupational therapist, self feeding skills and use of utensils is a biggie. This utensil set wins a gold star in my book. I like the size of the handle for little hands. I like the guard that keeps little ones from shoving the spoon too far into their mouth resulting in a gag. And a very important, but less discussed feature is the shallow bowl of the spoon, promoting lip closure to rake the food from the spoon into the mouth.

These are our favorite bibs. (Made by the same company of our favorite diaper covers). I can wipe them clean in between meals and throw them in the washing machine. They have a pocket to catch dropped food that I can easily dump out. I like them over silicone bibs because for some reason I feel like the silicone bibs create an animal trough and its kind of gross to me.

I like to keep a stash of extra cloth wipes in the kitchen to wipe sticky hands and faces after meal time. There’s just nothing quite like a cloth wipe to clean baby’s skin. In my opinion, disposable wipes pale in comparison. They just slide right over the gunk and you have to use more of them to get the job done. I also like being able to wet and rinse cloth wipes and reuse them for more than one meal time (depending on how dirty they are after use). I can hang it to dry on the bottle drying rack and its ready to go for the next meal. These are the cloth wipes we have and I love them.

This high chair fits in one of our kitchen chairs so there’s no extra chair to trip over in our small space. I love that the cover is washable and all the parts can be removed and placed in the dishwasher.

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