Keeping our children safe and making them healthy and happy is what all parents dream about. Good nutrition for infants or toddlers in his/her growing years is the cornerstone of achieving this. In this article, we will explain the basic principles of a healthy infant’s or toddler’s diet so that you will be empowered to choose recipes for your baby.
Infant & Toddler Feeding Basics
Let’s start talking from the very beginning – from the time your baby is born! And we will continue talking about his diet as he grows.
Your baby will need only Mother’s Milk for the first 6 months
All babies should receive only mothers’ milk and nothing else until they are 6 months old. Mother’s milk contains everything that your baby might need – nutrition to protection. Should you have any queries on breastfeeding, this article beautifully answers all your questions. Breastmilk, owing to its high-quality nutrient content and host of protective factors reduces the risk of acute and chronic diseases in your baby. Vitamin deficiencies are generally rare in exclusively breastfed babies. However, if the mother’s diet is deficient, the mother’s milk may contain less of this nutrition. If this is a concern, the priority is to improve the mother’s diet and not supplementing the baby with vitamins and minerals. The only vitamin supplementation a baby might need is a shot of Vitamin K at birth and supplementation of Vitamin D throughout the first year. Talk to your pediatrician regarding this.
Always keep in mind that mothers should take a wholesome diet throughout breastfeeding so that they can produce nutritious and wholesome milk for their baby.
Start Complementary feeding at 6 months
Once the baby is 6 months old, the energy provided by mothers’ milk is no longer enough to fulfill the needs of your baby. However, milk continues to meet the baby’s need for proteins, vitamins, and minerals. Therefore, we attempt to give food to the baby to complement the ‘energy gap’ or ‘energy deficit’ by breastfeeding alone and not to replace breastfeeding with food. So, the word used is ‘complementary food’ in contrast to the historic word of “weaning”.
The above graph depicts the concept of energy gap (light orange) that starts at around 6 months of age.
Continue breastfeeding your baby up to 2 years or beyond
Continue breastfeeding your baby even after you have started semisolid foods. Experts recommend that breastfeeding should continue up to 2 years of age. If you and your baby are both comfortable, you may continue breastfeeding even beyond that. It is because the mother’s milk continues to provide a significant amount of energy and nutrients required for your baby even during the second year of life.
A baby who breastfeeds beyond one year of age may receive up to 30-40% of their energy from breastmilk. Also, breast milk in the second year of life provides a substantial amount of micronutrients thereby protecting the baby from deficiencies. The impact of breastfeeding in the second year is more evident when the child falls ill. The food intake of the child invariably decreases during the period of illness when the energy provided by breastfeeding serves as a cushion.
What to feed if my baby Falls Sick?
Keep offering food during illness. You may want to offer some softer foods that are your child’s favorite. They will also need more fluid when they are not keeping well. If he/she is still breastfeeding, feed more frequently.
Complementary feed: What to feed and how much?
By now, we know the answers to:
- When should we start semi-solid food for our babies?
- Why do we start semi-solid foods at 6 months?
- Why do we need to continue breastfeeding our babies until two years of age even after the introduction of semi-solid food at 6 months?
Now, let’s come to a more practical question. What should we offer to the baby once he is old enough to receive semi-solid food?
Well, we have discussed that the immediate need to introduce complementary feeding is to bridge the energy deficit that breast milk is no longer able to fulfill alone. Therefore, the complementary food we choose should be high in calories. That means it should primarily consist of energy-giving food, that is carbohydrates and fats. We have already discussed that continuing breastfeeding after the introduction of semi-solid food takes care of a significant share of the protein and micronutrients requirement of your baby. Hence, they are not priority ingredients in complimentary food.
So, you can start with gruel made of cereals (wheat flour or rice power) cooked in water. It is better to avoid cooking in cow’s milk as cows’ milk protein can pass through the infant’s immature gut wall and give rise to an allergic response. You should add a little bit of sugar and oils/butter to increase the calorie density of the food.
You can start with a couple of spoons once a day. As the child grows older, you gradually increase the frequency of feeding. You should also gradually introduce pulses, carrots, pumpkins, potatoes, fruits like banana, mangoes, apple, etc, to increase food diversity that will take care of micronutrients the baby needs.
How to feed
It has been seen that if children are left to feed themselves, they do not do so well. So, responsive feeding or active feeding is advised. If your child is an infant, feed directly. Even older children who have learned to feed themselves would need some assistance. Feed them slowly and patiently while encouraging them to eat ( But do not force them). You would need to experiment with different food, tastes, textures, and encouragement methods to keep them going. Sometimes they will test your creativity.
The mealtime for your child should be a happy time full of love and learning opportunities. Keep on talking to them all along and maintain eye contact. Also, make sure to minimize distractions as they lose interest quickly.
Total nutrition: What does it mean?
Now, once you have started complementary feeding (previously called weaning food), you need to scale up slowly over time. This scaling up is in terms of quantity and also the quality of food offered. Babies have small stomachs. Hence, you cannot expect them to eat more at a time. You want to feed them more frequently instead.
What is our goal? A healthy vs Chubby baby
As a mother, many of us wish our baby to look chubby like the cute calendar babies. But what matters the most is that the baby should be healthy. In your periodic visit to your baby’s pediatrician, they take your baby’s height and weight and plot in on the growth curve. Your baby should be growing according to those growth charts.
He/she need not necessarily look chubby! Chubby or not, he should be healthy!
Other than weight and height, your baby should be an active and energetic bundle of joy! Also, he should be achieving all the developmental milestones. If you have any queries, be sure to talk to your baby’s doctor.
Is a full stomach good enough?
As a mother, you would be worried about whether your child is eating enough? Or is he remaining hungry? When your baby is younger, you have to be attentive to his hunger cues, and as they grow older, these cues become more obvious. We have discussed the basics of feeding the babies earlier in this post. If you are already doing it right, it is unlikely that your baby is remaining hungry. It is unlikely that you are not feeding enough unless you are in the middle of a famine, and you have a scarcity of food grains at home.
The world has come a long way since the children used to remain hungry. Now food scarcity is largely taken care of. Are they hungry? – not anymore! But, though we can fill their bellies, a different form of hunger goes unmet. The new challenge is hidden hunger. A type of hunger that you cannot see and cannot feel. What is that? Please read on.
Hidden Hunger – the new problem
Though our children are not remaining hungry, the quality and variety of foods that we offer have changed over time. We have a very narrow list of food items that we consume, and that is reflected in our children’s plates as well. Moreover, the rapidly expanding ready-to-use package food and fast food market is pushing our children away from a wholesome plate of food. Pester power marketing by companies makes sure that foods and beverages like soft drinks, icecreams, potato chips, and pizzas with ’empty calories’ reach our homes and then to our child’s plate. As their stomach is filled with this junk, they are not hungry anymore. They get their share of calories (& sometimes even more), but they remain hungry for nutrition, they remain hungry for micronutrients. This is the hunger that is not visible – the hidden hunger!
Good eating habits vs eating more
Therefore as a parent, your focus should be the ‘completeness’ of the nutrition of your child rather than the amount of food he is eating. Feed a variety of nutrient-rich food to make sure that your child receives all the required nutrition. You can achieve that by cultivating healthy eating habits and combating food fads. Maintaining a routine for food, children eating together with parents, parents serving as role models, etc are some steps to achieve it.
You may also want to read:
1.5 Great Ideas for Parents of Fussy Eaters
2. Your Kid Is A Fussy Eater? Here Are 21 Amazing Tips
Final Words
Let’s end this post by summarizing the main points. You should exclusively breastfeed your baby till 6 months of age. Once your baby is 6 months old, introduce complementary food as the energy from breastmilk is no longer enough for your baby at this point. Gradually build up the texture, amount, and variety of foods as your baby grows older. As your baby grows to a toddler now, focus more on eating habits and coping with food fads rather than on the quantity of food the child eats. However, be sure to encourage and assist your child during feeding time. Check with your pediatrician on routine visits if your child is growing well. Remember, your child needs to be healthy, not necessarily chubby!
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