Archive for the 'Feeding & Nutrition' Category

Most of the mothers cannot successfully breastfeed. Those mothers can use infant formula for their babies’ nourishment to develop and thrive.

Infant formula is the second best nutritious food after the breast milk for your baby. It acts as the best substitute for breast milk.

If your baby is not thriving on breast milk then you can switch to infant formula.

You can choose any type of infant formula; because they can be prepared according to FDA regulations and it can be nutritionally complete and safe for your baby.

Make sure that you should not use low iron formula.

Selecting the type of infant formula:

Choose an infant formula from regular cow’s milk based formula, soy formula or an elemental formula. You can also choose lactose free formula.

Infant formulas are mostly differing in the type of sugar and protein that they have. Some of the regular iron fortified formulas, such as Similac Advance, Enfamil Lipil, and Nestle Good Start Supreme are made with lactose and cow’s milk based proteins.

Infants who are not breastfeeding exclusively should be given a cow’s milk based iron fortified formula. Cow’s milk based infant formula is not recommended for premature and sick infants.

You can introduce some solid foods as your child tooth starts developing.

Solid foods are also important for your child’s nourishment.

This food consists of farinaceous matter boiled in water, beaten through a sieve and mixed with a small quantity of milk.

Continue the same food when one or two of the large grinding child tooth have appeared.

You can occasionally add beef tea and chicken broth to your child’s diet. You can also give a soft boiled egg and a small bread pudding made with one egg in it as the dinner meal.

It is more common that giving animal food while child tooth begin. But this is a great error that most of the mothers will do. To feed your infant with animal food before the proper child tooth for chewing it shows a total disregard to the plain indications of nature.

The method of grating and pounding meat, as a substitute for chewing, may be well suited to the toothless person of the age of 80 years whose stomach is capable of digesting it. The stomach of a young child is not adapted to the digestion of such food and will be disordered by it.

In addition to the most advantageous source of nutrition for your baby in her first year, nursing baby has apparent psychological benefits for both of you.

In today’s world most of the mothers are becoming aware of the important advantages of breastfeeding to their babies and to themselves.

Breastfeeding develops a special closeness between you and your baby.

At the birth time infants can able to see only 12-15 inches. This is the distance between a nursing baby and his/her mother’s face.

Studies have found that an infant after 1 week of his birth identifies the smell of their own mother’s milk.

Benefits of nursing baby:

• Many psychologists believe that nursing baby enjoys a sense of security from the warmth and presence of the mother.
• During feeding timings your baby feels secure when there is a skin-to-skin contact.
• Nursing mother must hug her infant closely many times during the day.
• Nursing baby becomes more than a way to feed a baby. It is a source of warmth and comfort.
• When your nursing baby is being fed in this way, it is natural for your baby to fall asleep quickly.

The first year of everyone’s life is a period of rapid growth. Your infant birth weight doubles after about five months and triples by the first birthday.

At the time of first birthday your infant length increases by half.

Meeting the infant nutritional needs is essential for the infants’ healthy growth and development.

Adequate and proper infant nutrition is essential at this period. If your infant does not receive sufficient calories, vitamins, and minerals he won’t reach your expected growth.

Infant nutrition is determined by rate of growth, size, activity and energy needed for metabolic activities. The calorie requirements per pound of body weight are greater during the first year of life than at any other time.

For the first six months of life breast or formula feeding can provide sufficient infant nutrition. By measuring weight and length and plotting it on a standardized growth grid, can helps you to determine how much infant nutrition can be required for their healthier growth.

The normal diet for infant nutrition consists of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.

As your newborn baby grows, she slowly adjusts to sleeping at night and being awake during the day.

As your baby’s stomach grows, she holds more breast milk or formula and hence there will be longer periods at night between feeding baby.

Some of the experts said that feeding baby can get one third of nutrition at nighttime feedings.

This is important for babies of working moms who may take in less milk during the day.

Nursing your baby can help your feeding baby to avoid nighttime feedings. Most babies drift peacefully back to sleep after nursing.

If you give solid foods to your baby before going to bed helps babies to sleep through the night. Hence you can avoid feeding baby at nighttimes. This can only works those babies who are more than 4 months old.

About three months of age your feeding baby will probably sleep about 15 hours out of each 24-hour period, and two thirds of that sleep will take place during the night.

Most babies will have settled into a daily schedule of two or three sleep periods during the day, followed by “sleeping through the night” for 6 to 7 hours after a late-night feeding.

Sufficient quantities of child diet make your child healthy.

If the child diet is disturbed with any other reasons then it can cause many problems in your child.

The quantity of child diet to be given at each time must be regulated by the age of the child and his digestive power.

A little experience will enable to determine this point. As your child grows older the quantity of the diet must be increased.

The most common mistake that the most of the mothers do is overfeeding of their baby.

It is a most serious one and is easily avoided by you following a systematic plan with regard to the hours of feeding, only yielding to the indications of appetite, and administering the food slowly, in small quantities at a time.

This systematic plan is the only way to effectively prevent the disorders due to improper child diet. These are more common in infants. This plan protects your infant health nutrition and consequent strength of constitution.

The common problems in infants due to inappropriate child diet are:

• Indigestion
• Bowel complaints
• Irritable condition of the nervous system

There is no need to worry about artificial diet. It won’t cause any harm to your child.

Artificial child diet is similar to the breast milk. It can be made by the mixture of cow’s milk, water and sugar.

The above ingredients are mixed in the following proportions.

• Fresh cow’s milk - 2/3rd
• Boiling water or thin barley water - 1/3rd
• Loaf sugar - sufficient quantity to sweeten

This child diet is the best diet and it can be used for the first six months, after which some food made of flour or meal may be combined.

In preparing artificial child diet it is very important to obtain pure milk. Don’t prefer the milk which is already skimmed or mixed with water and in warm weather just taken from the cow. Don’t mix water or sugar in the milk until wanted.

You have to make only the quantity that will be taken by your child at time. You don’t need to heat the milk over the fire, but let the water be in a boiling state when mixed with it, and thus given to the infant tepid or lukewarm.

Most pediatricians recommend exclusive breastfeeding for all infants during the first to six months after the birth.

Deficiency of breast milk may exist even at a very early period after delivery and however it can be removed.

Two or three weeks after the confinement, if the supply of breast milk for your infant is insufficient, use malt liquor for the increase of breast milk.

Later the use of malt liquor will be found injurious to your constitution.

But the use of malt liquor helps to increase the breast milk both as in quantity and quality and will be as ample, nutritious and good for your child’s health.

Steps to increase breast milk:

For every mother a plain, generous, and nutritious diet is recommended. Don’t depend on one description of food. You can take natural, a wholesome, mixed, animal, and vegetable diet, with or without wine or malt liquor, according to former habit.

Occasionally, you can also take malt liquor. If malt liquor has never been previously taken, a pint of good sound ale may be taken daily with advantage, if it agree with the stomach.