How Much Should My Baby Eat? Portions by Age From Six Months

Almost every weaning question eventually becomes this one. Not what to give, but how much of it, and whether the amount that just went in was enough.

It is the question with the least satisfying answer, because the real one is a range so wide it sounds like nobody is paying attention. Here is the range, why it is that wide, and the handful of things that genuinely tell you whether feeding is going well.

Why Nobody Will Give You a Number

Two reasons, and both are in your favour.

The first is that babies are born able to regulate their own appetite. Left to it, they eat to their needs across a week rather than a day, which is why a baby can clear a whole bowl on Monday and refuse the identical bowl on Tuesday. Weight gain follows the week, not the meal.

The second is that in the first year, solid food is not primarily about calories. Milk is doing that job. Early weaning is about learning to move food around the mouth, manage texture, chew, swallow and accept new flavours. Those are motor skills, and a teaspoon teaches them as well as a bowl does.

So a portion target would be measuring the wrong thing. What matters is the shape of the day and the direction of travel over weeks.

Milk Is Still the Answer Until One

This is the part that reframes everything else.

Breast milk or first infant formula stays the main drink for the whole of the first year. At six months a formula fed baby is typically taking somewhere around 500 to 600ml a day, and a breastfed baby feeds on demand. Solids sit alongside that, not instead of it.

Milk volume comes down gradually as solids go up, and it does so on its own if you let it. By twelve months most babies are on roughly three meals a day plus two milk feeds. From twelve months whole cow's milk can become the main drink, at around 350ml a day, or about three servings of dairy in total.

The mistake worth avoiding is cutting milk to make room for food. It runs the wrong way round, because milk is still the more nutrient dense of the two. Our guide to dropping milk feeds covers the order to do it in and the signs they are ready.

One vitamin D note while we are here. Breastfed babies need a daily supplement of 8.5 to 10 micrograms from birth. Formula fed babies do not need one until they are taking less than 500ml of formula a day, at which point they do.

Portions by Age

Realistic amounts, with the caveat that a baby at the bottom of this table and one at the top can both be thriving.

Age	Meals a day	Roughly how much	What it is for
6 to 7 months	One, building to two	1 to 2 teaspoons, moving to a few tablespoons	Taste and texture. Milk unchanged.
7 to 9 months	Two, building to three	2 to 4 tablespoons a meal, or a few finger foods	Iron becomes the point. Chewing develops.
9 to 12 months	Three, plus a snack	4 to 6 tablespoons, or a small bowl	Solids start doing real nutritional work.
12 to 18 months	Three meals, two snacks	A quarter to a third of an adult portion	Food is now the main event. Milk drops back.
18 months to 2 years	Three meals, two snacks	Roughly a third of an adult portion	Appetite becomes erratic. This is normal.

Notice what happens at the bottom of that table. Intake looks like it stalls somewhere in the second year, and parents often panic at exactly that point. It is not a stall. Growth slows dramatically after the first year, so appetite slows with it. A one year old triples their birth weight. A two year old does nothing of the sort.

The Fist Rule

The most useful portion tool costs nothing and is attached to the baby.

A serving of any single food is roughly the size of your child's own fist or the palm of their hand. Their hand grows as their stomach does, so the guide scales itself. A fist of pasta, a palm of chicken, a fist of vegetables, and if they want more you offer more.

It works because it fixes the actual problem, which is that adult plates and adult bowls make any baby portion look pitiful. Put four tablespoons of casserole in a normal cereal bowl and it looks like you have forgotten to feed them. Put it in a small dish and it looks like dinner.

One mother told us she had started photographing every meal so she could show the health visitor how little her eight month old was eating. The photographs ended up being the reassurance. Laid out side by side, a week of what felt like nothing was actually a lot of small somethings, and the days she remembered as disasters were outnumbered by ones she had forgotten entirely.

That is the general shape of it. Memory is bad at averaging, and feeding is a thing you can only judge on the average.

How to Tell They Have Had Enough

Babies signal fullness clearly. The signals just look like naughtiness once they can move their arms.

Still hungry: leaning towards the spoon, opening their mouth, getting excited when food appears, reaching, keeping their hands open and relaxed.

Finished: turning their head away, closing their mouth, pushing the spoon or bowl away, slowing right down, getting distracted, holding food in their mouth without swallowing, and yes, throwing it on the floor.

Throwing food is the one that gets misread most. Around eight to ten months it is usually a full baby experimenting with gravity rather than a rejection of your cooking. The right response is to end the meal calmly rather than to chase them with one more spoonful.

Which brings up the one habit worth breaking early. Encouraging a baby to finish a bowl teaches them to eat past fullness, and appetite regulation is much easier to keep than to rebuild. The bowl does not know how hungry they are. They do.

You Decide What and When, They Decide How Much

This is the single principle that makes the rest of it manageable, and it holds all the way through childhood.

Your job is what goes on the plate, when meals happen, and where they happen. Their job is how much of it they eat, and whether they eat any of it at all. When those roles blur is when mealtimes become a negotiation, and the negotiation is a much harder problem than the eating ever was.

In practice it means offering the food, sitting with them, and taking it away without commentary when they are done. No bargaining, no aeroplanes, no alternative meal produced ten minutes later. Our guide to what to do when a baby will not eat works through the refusal side of this in more detail, including how many exposures a new food genuinely needs.

The Days They Eat Almost Nothing

There will be plenty, and most have an explanation.

Teething makes chewing uncomfortable, so intake drops and cold soft foods do better for a few days. Illness suppresses appetite, and milk goes up while solids go down, which is exactly what should happen. Growth spurts run the other way and produce a week of eating everything in sight.

Timing is the most fixable one. A meal offered straight after a big milk feed lands badly, and so does one offered to an overtired baby at half past six. Try milk and food an hour or so apart, and move the meal earlier if the end of the day is a write off.

Distraction matters more than people expect. A television on, a busy room or a phone at the table all reduce how much a baby eats, because eating well requires paying attention to it.

If the amount is dropping, look at the shape of the day before you look at the food. Snacks and milk creeping closer to meals is the most common cause of a baby who suddenly is not hungry at lunch. Our four week weaning plan lays out a workable daily rhythm, and the finger foods by stage guide helps if the issue is texture rather than appetite.

When It Is Worth Getting Checked

Variation is normal. These are the things that are not, and they are worth a health visitor or GP appointment rather than another week of watching.

Weight. Faltering growth or dropping across centile lines on the chart, rather than one flat weigh-in.

No progress at all. Still refusing everything at eight or nine months, or refusing all lumps and textures beyond about ten months, which can point to a sensory or oral motor issue that is much easier to help early.

Fewer wet nappies than usual, or signs of dehydration during an illness.

Choking rather than gagging. Gagging is loud, red faced and protective, and it is part of learning to eat. Choking is silent. The difference is worth being sure about, and our guide to starting solids explains it properly.

Reactions. Rash, swelling, vomiting or breathing changes after a food need medical input, not a smaller portion.

Short of that list, the useful summary is that a baby who is growing, weeing, developing and reasonably content is eating enough, whatever the bowl looks like. Weigh the week, offer good food, and let them decide the rest. Our first 100 foods list is the easiest way to keep variety going once you stop counting spoons.

This article is general information and does not replace advice from your health visitor, GP or dietitian. If you have concerns about your baby's growth or feeding, ask for a weigh-in and a conversation rather than waiting.