Infant Nutrition
Newly born babies are totally dependent upon their parents to care for them and ensure that all of their dietary requirements are met on a daily basis. The first year of an infant’s life is filled with many changing caloric and dietary needs, from milk or formula to solid foods.
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These health needs must be met in a timely manner in order to ensure that the infant’s nutritional needs are being maintained to grow into a healthy toddler.
Guidelines for Infant Nutrition: Stage One
Initially, a baby's mouth is designed only to suckle at its mother’s breast or upon a bottle. The tongue is actually designed with a thrust reflex that will push things out of its mouth until the infant turns about five months old.
The baby actually has a rooting instinct, much the same as that seen in puppies and kittens, which will assist the baby in rooting for the breast of its mother. For the newborn infant, breast milk or fortified baby formula is the only dietary requirement for daily nutritious meals.
Guidelines for Infant Nutrition: Stage Two
As the baby grows, it begins to increase its nutritional needs. The infant’s nutritional requirements begin to grow at a parallel rate with the infant and by the fifth month the infant is ready to begin experimenting with small spoonfuls of pureed food.
Generally babies begin their first experience 'eating solids' by consuming a 'watered'; down version of baby oatmeal; a specialty oatmeal designed for infants that is actually diluted with breast milk or formula into a very liquid state that is easy to swallow but still encourages the infant to ingest the "solid".
This oatmeal is basically a supplemental meal to the daily bottle or breast-feeding sessions and does not yet constitute a main meal within the daily nutrition of the infant's dietary needs.
Learning to Implement Healthy Food Choices at a Young Age Will Leave a Lifelong Dietary Impression. For a concerned mother, monitoring her infant's nutritional and dietary needs can be very assuring when trying to provide for her child.
Through the introduction of different healthy food choices, reading dietary guidelines and suggestions for healthy dietary meals and learning to cook home-prepared baby foods a concerned mother can encourage a nutritious diet for her infant that will build into a healthy lifestyle for her child.
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