Baby Care

Posts Tagged ‘infancy’

Weaning is the process of introducing your baby to solids after being totally dependent on breast milk for her nutritional need for the first six months of life. You can gradually introduce your baby to minced or mashed foods and foods that need to be chewed. Of course, you may continue to breast or bottle-feed your baby alongside solid foods for as long as it’s comfortable for you and your baby.
As with breastfeeding on demand, Baby Weaning is a method of introducing solid foods that leaves it up to your baby to decide when and how much to eat.  While not necessarily a “hands off” approach, Baby Weaning does advocate allowing your baby to make all food choices for him or herself.
You are the best judge of when it’s time to wean, and you do not have to set a deadline unless you and your child are ready to do so. However, now the Department of Health recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months (26 weeks). Breast milk and formula milk are easy for your baby to digest and provide all the calories and nutrients your baby needs for healthy growth and development. Also, it is thought that the chances of developing allergies are greatest during infancy, so feeding your baby a diet of breast milk or formula until this time helps reduce the risk of introducing allergens. As your baby’s digestive system matures, he or she will be better able to handle different foods without an allergic reaction. Breast or formula milk will continue to be a very important source of nutrition whilst your baby adjusts to a mixed diet and for the first year or so of life. If you feel your baby needs to start solids before this, do talk to your health visitor. The Department of Health used to recommend that babies were started on solids between the ages of four and six months.

How to know when your baby is ready for weaning?
Don’t rush into weaning as a result of pressure from parents or friends, but be guided by the following signals from your baby:
• being unsatisfied after a full milk feed
• demanding increasing and more frequent milk feeds
• weight gain slowing or leveling out without a period of illness to explain why
• after a period of sleeping through the night, your baby begins waking because he/she is hungry

You may also notice your baby showing interest in your food and attempting to put things in his/her mouth.
If you are unsure or concerned about when your baby is ready to begin weaning, talk to your health visitor.

In many families it is mother who is responsible for bringing up the children. First of all, mother should use her imagination and creativity in education,  of course bearing in mind the stage of child’s development.

There are no ready formulas for education, especially in infancy. Moreover, all ready formulas and rules should always be questioned.

The tenderness with which the mother holds her child in her arms, and love that she feels for the baby, as well as the milk, are very important to his emotional state and for his physical health. The above mentioned are, in fact, the main factors in the formation of the human.

Around the age of 2-3 months, baby begins to smile, babble and remember everything that is happening around him. We sometimes don’t even suspect that  babies brain had already remembered all the frequently used words and actions of his mother. Baby needs real communication with his parents in an adult way. For example, when the child begins to speak, he only murmurs something similar to words, but this is because of the fact that his organs of speech haven’t developed yet, but not from a lack of mental development. Therefore, if adults talk to him on the “child” language, believing that the child doesn’t understand other language, the right language skills will never be set. Moreover, in the process of mastering the language, he will always be based not on his speech, but on how adults talk.

And also when you think about his mental and intellectual development, you can find new meaning in the habit of sleeping with a child.

Mother, who  doesn’t have enough time to communicate with the child, may, at least, lie with him until he is asleep. During this short time the baby is quiet and very sensitive. So if you can not just only lie next to him and watch him sleeping but also sing lullaby (in the presence of hearing you) or turn on a recorder, it will have a positive impact on the  child’s  development. Always use this opportunity to talk with your child.

A child brought up by mother, who has no musical ear, too, will grow without a hearing musical perception, because in general the development of character and ability is formed  under the influence of parents’ habits.