Parenting Blog

photo credit: diluvi

Breastfeeding really is a good deal easier than bottle feeding and it’s surely more better for your baby. Companies making milk formula tell us how their formula is ‘the most like breast milk it has ever been’. Perhaps this is true, but it never will be as good as breast milk.

Whenever you read the ingredients on the side of the tin you will find a lot of the following: vegetable oils; disodium guanosine-5, monophosphate, taurine, magnesium, sodium citrate, pantothenic acid, potassium chloride, beta-carotene and biotin. What exactly is disodium guanosine-5?

Companies have been making formula for only the past century; women have been making breast milk a lot longer than that. As well, formula is made for everyone’s baby, whereas a mother’s breast milk is unique; it is made just for her child.

Getting up in the middle of the night to feed a baby is incredibly tiring. Why make it even more tiring than it already is by bottle feeding?  Once you bottle feed, you’ve to get out of bed and boil water, make the formula and so wait for it to cool before you are able to feed baby. When you breastfeed you do not have to even get out of bed, whenever you baby is in a crib alongside you. You are able to feed your child and get back to sleep far sooner than whenever you bottle feed.

The answer to this question is “yes”. The answer is also “no”! The full answer is that, like all human beings, babies do need to take in water in order to survive.
But they don’t actually need to drink water—in fact, pediatricians advise against giving your baby plain or distilled water until he or she is six months old. Babies get their water needs met by drinking breastmilk or formula, both of which are mostly water.

The reason your doctor will tell you not to feed your baby plain water is that it’s easy to fill up an infant’s stomach; a few little ounces will do the job. Babies should be filling up on nourishment—getting the nutrients they need from each feeding. Once your baby has been teething, he or she will need fluoride to support the
new teeth, so giving drinking water is a good way to meet that need. But until then, let your baby get water in his or her usual feedings of mother’s milk or formula.

If your baby is running a temperature, your pediatrician may advise you to give him or her more liquids. Usually, your doctor will suggest a liquid like Pedialyte, which contains nutrients to restore the balance of your child’s electrolytes. Again, don’t give your infant water instead of other liquids unless the doctor advises it.

Mealtime Solutions  for Your Baby, Toddler and Preschooler
The Ultimate No-Worry Approach for Each Age and Stage
Click here to download! (1.24 MB)

Contents

• Chapter 1: What’s on Tap?: In Praise of the Liquid Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner
• Chapter 2: That Lovin’ Spoonful: Introducing Solids
• Chapter 3: Mr. Spaghetti Head: Added Tastes and Textures for Baby
• Chapter 4: Your Top Toddler Mealtime Mysteries Solved
• Chapter 5: The Discriminating Diner: Feeding Your Preschooler
• Chapter 6: Dining in and Dining out
• Chapter 7: No More Food Fights
• Chapter 8: When Your Child Is Sick Food and Nutrition Tools
• Reference Tools
  • Appendix A: Directory of Organizations
  • Appendix B: Directory of On-line Resources
  • Appendix C: Further Reading

Originally posted 2009-05-21 03:55:07. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

For the first four to six months of your baby’s life, his or her diet consists solely of milk, whether from breast or bottle. When it comes time to start feeding your baby solid food, many experts give conflicting advice about what the right types of food to feed your baby. Some of these experts are of course, right in your own family. Grandma, Aunt Bessie, your sister, and others will all want to help you out by telling you what is best. What they may not understand is that recommendations may have changed since they were the mother of a new baby.

Dr. Ronald Kleinman, chief of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition at Massachusetts General Hospital, recalls nutritional guidelines that differ greatly from today’s recommendations. “Several generations ago, doctors were quite dogmatic in establishing the order of what came first, next, and next. For example, the pediatrician would say, ‘First, rice cereal. Then, peas. Then, introduce a yellow vegetable.’ There wasn’t any rhyme or reason to that dogmatism.”

**50% of Scottish Babies fed Organic Baby Food

According to the Scotsman, more than half of Scottish children under two are now fed an exclusively organic diet. In fact, organic baby food accounted for 43% of total baby food sales in 2004. That represented sales of more than 63 million GBP in 2004.

A survey of 805 mothers and pregnant women conducted by the polling company BMRB found that four out of five mothers chose organic food for weaning their young children off of milk (between 6 months and 1 year old). The reasons given were clearly related to additives and chemical spraying. Mothers in the survey cited “less risk of chemical pesticides” (87%), “no additives” (80%), and “no GM” (84%)

Intensive marketing campaigns by groups such as the Soil Association Scotland are getting the message across about the negative effects of pesticides. This is clearly having an impact on the buying preferences of parents, and also on changes in school menus.

Organic milk also has positive health characteristics. It can contain up to 71 per cent more omega 3 than non-organic milk and most organic milk has a better ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 than conventional milk. Companies such as Hipp are bringing new products to market — such as organic purees for weaning purposes — to take advantage of the demand.

Many expectant Moms ask themselves whether or not they should breastfeed their baby. The vast majority of medical professionals will give them a resounding yes when asked this question, at least for most mothers. For the majority of new mothers, breastfeeding is highly recommended. But it is not recommended for all mothers. Mothers who are HIV positive or who have AIDS should not breastfeed their baby because the HIV virus can be passed to the baby through breast milk. Breastfeeding is also not recommended for mothers undergoing cancer treatment; as well as mothers who have untreated Hepatitis B and mothers who have active tuberculosis that hasn’t been under treatment for at least two weeks.

I’m not sure when breastfeeding fell out of favor in the United States. Until baby formula was developed in 1867 by Henri Nestlé of the Nestle Company, breastfeeding was the only viable option for feeding babies. If a mother was unable to feed her own baby, a “wet nurse” was found to feed the baby for that mother.

Download ebook “Baby & Toddler Meals For Dummies”
Click here to download! (5.71 MB)

Contents at a Glance

• Introduction
• Part I: Lovin’ Spoonfuls: Feeding Your Baby and Toddler
  • Chapter 1: Little Meals for Little Folks, from Applesauce to Zucchini
  • Chapter 2: Raising a Well-Fed Child
  • Chapter 3: Tools and Tricks of the Trade: Kitchen Basics
• Part II: From Womb to Highchair: The First 12 Months
  • Chapter 4: Welcome to the World, Baby! The First Four Months
  • Chapter 5: Enter Solid Foods: 4 to 6 Months
  • Chapter 6: Foods for Your Crawler: 6 to 12 Months
• Part III: Big Changes Ahead: Feeding Your Toddler
  • Chapter 7: First Steps and First Scheduled Meals: 12 to 18 Months
  • Chapter 8: Good Eats for Your Active 18-Month- to 2-Year-Old
  • Chapter 9: Tasty Meals for 2-Year-Olds
• Part IV: Welcoming Your Child to the Big People’s Table
  • Chapter 10: Enticing Your 3- to 5-Year-Old
  • Chapter 11: Cooking with Your Little One
  • Chapter 12: Appealing Meals to Suit the Entire Family
• Part V: Fast Fixes for Mealtime Hurdles
  • Chapter 13: Dealing with Food-Related Challenges

Breastfeeding can be an experience of isolation. A new mum, breastfeeding for the first time, may feel cut off from family and friends if they are unsupportive or simply do not understand their motives.

It too often assumes that a breastfeeding mummy scurry off to the fact behind a locked door and well out of sight. And god forbids pronounce the sentence, I was breastfeeding! Those men avoided her eyes and smiling as the women mingle their feet and move the conversation forward rapidly! So much for the breastfeeding peer support!

Most of the mummies who choose to breastfeed their babies do so because they have been made aware of the advantages of breastfeeding for life. But when it comes to the task itself, have much sense for anyone to turn to information and advice when things do not go as planned. For that reason, many breastfeeding mummies give up breastfeeding early.

The World Health Organization recommends exclusive breastfeeding of infants for the first six months of their lives. But many are only breastfeed for a few days or weeks.

It is vital that the mummies have a breastfeeding support and information network of people to seek help.

Some point after your child starts eating solid foods, you may be wondering when you should switch from breastmilk or formula to cow’s milk. The Canadian Paediatric Society does not recommend cow’s milk before the ages of 9-12 months, but in the US they don’t recommend it until at least a year old. Of course that would be the case, Canada and the US disagreeing on when baby should switch to cow’s milk. However, there are some things to consider before you make the transition that should help make the decision easier.
• The primary reason why babies shouldn’t be on cow’s milk too early is the worry of iron deficiency or anemia. Cow’s milk does not contain very much iron and it’s therefor more difficult for your baby to absorb it. However, by waiting at least nine months before giving them milk, iron deficiency should no longer be a concern.
• If you’re breastfeeding, the longer you can keep your baby on breast milk, the better. Not only is this method free, but the list of benefits to breastfeeding is long and continues to grow as more and more research is done.
• If you’re formula feeding, the temptation to bring cow’s milk into your child’s diet too early may be overwhelming since formula can be very expensive. In the US, subsidized formula is available for many families so take advantage of that if you qualify. In Canada, there are numerous sites where you can sign up to receive coupons and samples in the mail. Visit the freebie page for a few examples. Otherwise, try to hang in there as long as you can, and if people are offering baby gifts, suggest for them to buy some formula for you.