Guidelines for Complementary feeding of breastfeeding babies

Guidelines for Complementary feeding of breastfeeding babies

Approximately, 6 months after the baby is born, well into the practice of breastfeeding and experiencing sufficient growth spurts, human milk becomes insufficient to provide complete nourishment to the baby required at the time. Although, breastfeeding is continued even at this point, adequate nutrition is important for the growth and development of the infant. To fill this nutritive gap, other healthy foods and liquids are introduced to the baby’s diet; this process of requiring food other than breast milk is called complementary feeding and can play a crucial part in the successful mental and physical development of the infant.

Complementary feeding should occur at the proper time, not too soon when the baby is not ready to feed solids, nor too late when the baby might start suffering from malnutrition. It is at this time that malnutrition, infant illnesses such as diarrhea and nutrient deficiencies can occur if complementary feeding is not started on time and successfully. In extreme cases, if complimentary feeding is delayed to more than a year, the baby may refuse to eat solid foods at all. This malnutrition can have a long term effect on the life of the infant as a growing up child and adult, vulnerable to diseases.

Complementary feeding is a crucial time for the baby when the most important thing is the balance between breastfeeding and complementary food, the quality and appropriateness of food for an infant and the combinations of food best for growth. Maintain breastfeeding and practices such as pumping milk that encourage the continual flow of milk production can be carried out to ensure that breast milk is produced even when the baby’s intake has reduced. Manual or electric breast pumps like Medela Breast Pump can be used by mothers for this purpose. The frequency of breastfeeding should remain more or less the same since the infant is still largely dependent on mother’s milk. Breast milk continues to nourish the child providing numerous benefits that cannot be compensated for by any other way.

Babies at this time are learning how to eat solid food so they should be offered soft and healthy foods that enhance the effect of breastfeeding rather than replace it; the variety of this food can be changed after time. At 6 months, mostly mashed food softened with breast milk is best for the baby, from the 6th till 11th month, energy concentrated food important for growth should be given and after 12 months the baby can be started on the family diet. The mixtures or combinations of food are also important, and include fruits, vegetables and dairy products in the proper proportion.

The quantity of food given and its quality must be checked with the doctor or health expert. Usually it is recommended that 6 to 8 months old babies should be given 200 kcal worth of energy everyday by complementary food, 9 to 11 month olds should be given 300kcal worth of energy everyday from complementary foods and 12 to 24 month olds should be given 550 kcal worth of energy from complementary foods. Increasing the frequency of feeding complementary foods gradually with age can positively effect development as well; 6 to 8 months old should be fed complementary foods 2 to 3 times a day, 9 to 11 month olds should be fed complementary foods 3 to 4 times a day and 12 to 24 month olds should be fed complementary foods 3 to 4 times a day as well.

Sufficient gap must be given between meals and healthy snacks should be incorporated in the diet as well. Food items like meat, poultry and fish should be given frequently, however, the amount of fish should be limited since it contains levels of mercury. Fruits rich in vitamins and vegetables are important to be fed frequently; also use iodized salt, vitamin A enriched sugar, iron enriched flour etc. to prepare food for the baby. Avoid giving low-nutrient drinks such as beverages, tea or coffee etc. These products can interfere with the baby’s normal diet routine.

Feeding the baby actively and responsively is a responsibility on the part of the parents or caregiver; feed infants directly and assist older children in eating. If your children seem uninterested in eating, offer them their favourite foods, experiment with varying combinations of food if child refuses to eat, encourage children to eat but don’t force them, feed them slowly and patiently and minimize distractions during feeding. A vital part of complementary feeding is taking care of hygiene during food preparation and feeding; wash hands before and after preparation and feeding, use clean utensils to prepare food and to serve it to the baby and store food in a clean and dry place. It is also incumbent upon health care experts to educate and advise families and parents on complementary feeding, practices, problems and techniques to make it a successfully nutritious experience for the child.

How To Choose An Infant Car Seat For Your New Born Baby

How to choose and use an infant car seat for your new born

Infant car seats are specially designed for new born babies to make it easy for parents to move around with small babies on long and short drives in car. Infant car seats are lightweight and made from plush material so your child can travel without getting tired or uncomfortable. Like all other baby car seats, infant car seats are also adjustable and come with extra accessories such as a padded head and body rest to allow you to carry small babies easily. Here are some tips which will help you choose the best infant car seat for your baby:

Choosing the right car seat
A good quality dependable infant car seat which fits in your vehicle is essential as it will give you peace of mind and make your baby comfortable in it. A poor quality car seat which is difficult to install will most likely be installed incorrectly in place, increasing the chances of your baby’s injury.

Car seat manufacturers like Graco, Britax, Peg Perego and others produce high quality infant car seats which can be used for new born babies to infants weighing up to 20 or 30 pounds. This weight limit differs from car seat to car seat, and you should read the recommended weight and height limits for a car seat before buying it. Once your baby car seat grows out of the infant car seat, parents can shift to convertible car seats, which can be installed in both rear facing and forward facing positions.

Good quality infant car seats come with 5-point harness system and use EPS energy absorbing foam lining to reduce shocks from reaching the baby in case of an accident or side impact. The seats also meet and exceed US Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and are tested for side impact protection. This gives peace of mind to parents and ensures your childs safety. Car seat makes like Recaro test their seats for some of the most rigorous accidents to provide maximum safety and protection to your infant.

Installing an infant car seat
All infant car seats are installed in rear facing position and should always be placed on the back seat. They should never be installed on the front passenger seat, especially if the vehicle has side air bags on the passenger seat side. In case of an accident, if the air bags get inflated, the baby will not be able to tolerate the sudden pressure caused from the air bags. New born babies can suffer from neck injuries which can be fatal in extreme cases for the small child.

The stay-in-car base of the infant car seat has to be installed in place only once. Most infant car seats available in the market are LATCH equipped to use the vehicles LATCH system, also known as Universal Anchorage System, to install them in place. When using the vehicles seat belts to secure the seat in place, always use your body weight to tighten the seat belts as far as possible. Once installed, the seat should not move more than an inch from side to side or forward. Parents should use a belt locking clip to tighten any lose seat belt. Another good safety tip for parents is to tug the seat each time before or after placing the baby in the car seat to make sure that the car seat is still tightly in place.

Using the harness system properly
All new infant car seats now come with 5-point harness system, unlike the older car seats which used 3-point harness. Baby car seats with five-point harness strap the baby in place much better, by going over the baby’s shoulders and hips. The extra harness straps protect the baby in side-impact crashes by restricting the baby’s side to side movement.

Parents should make sure that the harness straps lie flat and are not folded or twisted. The harness straps should be straight and secured in place snugly around the baby, leaving only room for a single finger width between the strap and the child’s body.

Ensuring your child’s safety is important for every parent, which is why you should make an effort to install the infant car seat in place properly every time, and also use it by following the manufacturers recommended guidelines for your child’s safety.

Is An Ugly Baby Harder to Love?

Reprinted from Time Magazine - June 24, 2009

Moms might want to hang on to those Mother's Day cards they got last month. There may not be much more familial goodwill forthcoming — at least not after kids get wind of a new study released by Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital and published in the online journal PloS One. Turns out that your mother's feelings for you may not be the unconditional things you always assumed. It's possible, researchers say, that the prettier you were when you were born, the more she loved you.

It's never been a secret that beautiful people get more breaks than everyone else, nor that the bias may start in the nursery. An oft cited — and deeply disturbing — Israeli study once showed that 70% of abused or abandoned children had at least one apparent flaw in their appearance, which otherwise had no impact on their health or educability. McLean psychiatrist Dr. Igor Elman and postdoctoral student Rinah Yamamoto devised a study to explore that phenomenon more closely. (See pictures of pregnant-belly art.)

Elman and Yamamoto recruited 27 volunteers — 13 men and 14 women — and sat them at computer screens where they were randomly shown pictures of 50 healthy and attractive babies and 30 others with distinct facial irregularities such as a cleft palate or a skin condition. The volunteers were told that each picture would remain on the screen for four seconds but they could shorten that time by clicking one key or prolong it by clicking another. What the researchers wanted to learn, Elman explains, is how much effort people were willing to exert to look at pictures of pretty babies or avoid pictures of less pretty ones — and, importantly, what that implies.

Much of the answer, they found out, depends on the beholder's sex. The men in the study were less likely than women to click off photos of unattractive babies — viewing them for the full four seconds — but clicked quite a bit to hold on to the images of the pretty ones. Their reactions were the same whether they had children of their own or not. Women, conversely, left the keyboard alone when they were looking at pretty babies but hurried away from the less attractive ones — with the results again not seeming to be influenced by whether or not they were mothers themselves. (See seven iPhone applications for new moms.)

"[Women] pressed the key 2.5 times as much to get rid of those pictures," Elman says. "That's highly statistically significant."

Of all the things driving that response, the most primal one may be evolution. Parents devote a lot of resources to raising a child — food, time, money, love — and those assets are usually in finite supply. All animals, humans included, are hardwired to spend wisely, devoting the most energy to the offspring most likely to yield the highest genetic payoff; healthy, beautiful offspring are the best bet of all. Perhaps women, who still must do the lion's share of childcare, are naturally more attuned to this trade-off than men are. "In general, men tend to be aesthetically oriented," Elman says, "so they'll press a lot to hold the beautiful babies on the screen. Women are more consequence-oriented." (Read "Parenting Advice: What Moms Should Learn from Dads.)

There are some potential holes in Elman's work, all of which he acknowledges. For one thing, it's possible women avoid the unattractive faces not because they're less sensitive to them but because they're more sensitive, simply finding the hardships endured by unhealthy babies too difficult to contemplate. Such highly tuned empathy can ultimately make them better caregivers, even if a four-second exposure to the idea is painful. "Everyone will try to get away from a stimulus that feels like a punishment and hold on to one that feels like a reward," Elman says.

More important, the way people of either gender react to a picture of an anonymous child with physical abnormalities is likely to be radically different from the way they would react if that child were their own — something that is readily evident from all the disabled children on whom parents lavish love. Still, the fact that both parents and nonparents in Elman's study reacted the same way to the pictures suggests that their responses are deeply ingrained and that they may be hard to mitigate simply by having children of their own.

The gender differences, by the way, don't let fathers off the hook. Men may not have hurried to get the unattractive faces off the screen, but neither did they linger over them the way they did the attractive faces. In both cases, this suggests bias, and when the rubber hits the road of real childcare, parents of either sex may end up having similar instincts. More clarity should come when Elman conducts the next phase of his work: running the same experiment but hooking the subjects up to brain scans throughout it. This will make it far easier to see just which areas of the brain are activated when viewing the pictures and, by implication, which feelings and motivations are being evoked. Until then, both Mom and Dad — who already have enough to worry about — should probably get the benefit of the doubt.