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Babies - Weaning

Fed like footballers

The other day a very stressed young mother came to see me with two huge twin baby boys. They were so big she actually had someone with her to help her carry them around.

-I am exhausted, she cried, they only sleep very little during the day. That would not be too bad but they start waking up at 10 P.M. and then wake up every hour or every two hours. I have not slept for months. My husband is tired even before he gets to work, I don’t know how much more I can take of this! Also, she added, one of them tends to vomit back most of his food, I have been advised to give him some antacid but I hate to give him medication already. He is only seven months old.

At this stage I asked what the boys diet was and this is what she told me:

• 6.30 a.m.: A bottle of formula.
• 7 a.m.: Weetbix, water and formula.
• 12 noon: vegetables, such as cauliflower cheese or zucchini and pasta. Chopped liver.
• 3 p.m.: fruit juice and biscuits.
• 5p.m.: same sort of things as lunch or fruit and yogurt.

ALSO, they were having a bottle of formula with baby porridge WITH EVERY MEAL.

I honestly expected her to tell me that before they retired at 7p.m., they partook in a scotch and cigar!

Dear readers, in case you were confused by the above, or that there was a misprint somewhere, I shall repeat a small detail: the twin were seven months old, like twenty eight WEEKS, like two hundred and ten DAYS! They only had five teeth between the two of them!

No wonder one of the poor little mites threw up his food, no wonder they were so big and stayed awake all night! They had more energy than the whole entire Australian Rugby Union team: they would have made the All Blacks quake in their pants, just the two of them! They were dressed for it too: jeans and windcheaters, they just looked like dwarfed little footballers.

So, today I want to plead with mothers to let babies BE  babies. The above story is by no means exceptional. One young mother was worried that her little boy’s penis might be too small: he was four months old. Another one thought her five months old had Attention Deficit Disorder. Another one thought her six months old was a bit slow (she had a three years old daughter that seemed so much brighter; she had forgotten that it took a while for babies to learn a few things).

Parents (especially mothers) naturally want the best for they babies and are terribly worried that they may miss out. But they forget the most fundamental thing: all a baby needs is to do is grow and to grow s/he needs as  much peace and safety as possible. Here are a few pointers.

• In all species babies are really cute. That is so that parents melt at the sight of them and want to take care of them and molly coddle them. Let your baby look like a baby! I know those little jeans look terrific but the problem when people dress their babies like mini adults is that they tend to forget that they are in fact NOT adult. And then they wonder why they wobble and dribble and don’t seem so bright!
• Food for babies should be really simple; that’s because their digestive system is immature. Ideally all they need is their mother’s milk for many, many months. If they are on formula, they still only need formula for many, many months. This fashion to shove solid food in babies mouths at three months is disastrous: it creates a lot of digestive problems and behavioural problems (such as not sleeping) because the baby has more energy than it needs and the wrong kind of energy.
• Let your babies rest and sleep. Give them a lot of quiet and peaceful time, don’t take them out for too long periods of time in noisy places. Don’t take them to lots of kiddies parties. They really, really don’t care about kiddies parties. What they want is to be safe and secure.
• Don’t over excite your babies. Their nervous system is also immature, it takes a while for all its different parts to connect. To overstimulate them actually causes the nervous system to switch off rather than connect.
• Television in the background, shaking and squeezing toys in their face non stop, talking to them non stop, loud music are all means of overexcitement and are as bad as neglecting a baby and letting him/her stew in a cot all day.

If you overfeed, over-excite, under-rest your babies they will punish you with colic, vomit, sleeplessness and being generally unpleasant. They have no other way to tell you to slow down. Babies are officially babies until they start walking and become toddlers. At this stage they can actually walk away from you and be naughty which is another way they can tell you to back off. Then they go to school. When they become teenagers, they really will know how to tell you to back off and you will wish then that they could have been babies longer.

So, don’t be in a hurry for your baby to be grown up, allow her/him to be a baby, enjoy those very short months. As a result you will have a much more pleasant baby and you will have less work to do as well!

WEANING WITHOUT TEARS

One of the things that worry new mothers the most is how and when to wean their babies. Unfortunately the official position is that mothers are actually HASSLED and I really mean ‘hassled’ in to giving their babies ‘solids’ very early.

The Baby’s Gut

Babies are born with an immature gut. This immaturity makes it very delicate, this is why some babies suffer from colic. This gut has evolved to break down one thing and one thing only: milk.

In the same way that not all babies suffer from colic and those that do, not to the same degree; babies’ guts mature at different rates. However, NO baby has a mature gut at the age of three months. This is why it is madness to force solid food in their unsuspecting little mouths.

Many babies throw up their first solid meal and good on them! So they should send back this indigestible muck!

When Should I Wean Baby?

Certainly not when someone tells  you to do it. Actually, when some hard nose outsider tells you, you should start giving baby solids; you should ask: why?

If your baby is thriving on milk, whether it is breast milk or formula milk, there is really no reason for forcing anything else on her/him. Remember milk is the food nature intended for all babies.

In fact a recent survey indicated that children weaned too early have a greater chance of developing diabetes later in life than children that were kept on a milk regime for longer.

Real Clues and Cues

Some babies become really interested in their parents food early in the piece, at the age of six months; some others could not care less until they are twelve months old. That’s why it is a really good idea to sit baby with you, perhaps in a high chair, when you are having your meals. This has several advantages:

• You can judge whether or not baby is really interested in having some solid tucker.
• You can introduce bits of food that the baby will have to eat as they grow. In this way, they can start building up enzymes to break down this food, not something out of a tin.
• Baby has to sit up in order to eat. The action of sitting up, picking up something and putting it straight into the mouth is a sure sign that baby is ready to start eating solids.

What Should I Wean Baby With?

Definitely NOT baby cereal and fruit! I know, this is what is automatically given to all babies but just because everybody does something, does not mean it’s the right thing to do.

The problem with cereals is that they are really hard on that delicate gut of baby’s and the problem with fruit is that it breaks baby into the sweet taste and that is the beginning of a very bad habit.

Little babies don’t care for sweets. It’s us, the adults, who introduce them to that taste. The best thing to wean babies on is vegetable purees. It is in fact better to buy jars of pumpkin baby food than to give them wheatgerm with raw fruit mash.

Mash your own vegetables. Make veggie soups for your baby, put them in little jars and freeze them.

Give baby tiny amounts of lots of different foods. This will not only open their appetite for variety but it will also be very kind on the digestion.

Don’t give them cereals before they are at least eight or nine months old. You can give them small amounts from your own plate, such as spaghetti to suck on or a piece of toast. But don’t shovel plates full of porridge down their gullet.

You can also let baby suck on the bone of a cutlet or a chicken leg. If you are Italian let them eat Italian food; Chinese, Chinese food; Aussie, Aussie food! After all they will eat mostly YOUR food until they become teenagers and all they want is hamburgers and chips.

Don’t give any sweet foods until they are at least one year old, make it fruit and don’t give them too much of it.

Remember if a baby vomits a new food or if it is followed by foul diarrhoea or constipation, it’s a sure sign that this has upset the digestion and s/he is not ready for this yet.

By giving your baby a slow, easy transition from milk to solids not only will you insure safety for his/her gut but you will also make life much easier on yourself.

NOT THE BABY CUP!

Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but mothers with young children reckon disposable nappies and no spill cups are some of their best friends. You know, the no-spill cup: you put drinks in it, click on the top and you hand it over to your toddler with no worries about wetness down baby’s clothes or stains on the new carpet or the car upholstery.

You know what is about to come: I am going to give you bad news, aren’t I?

Yep! Hey, it’s not my fault! Blame it on the speech therapists. What has surfaced in the past few years is that kindergarten toddlers have been suffering from some serious speech impediments.

Why Is It So?

When children use those beaked cups instead of ordinary drinking glasses or cups, they suck and slurp instead of swill and gulp. In other words they are still sucking like babies instead of making their tongue and whole mouth work. As a result they get a lazy tongue, which cannot produce certain sounds, they speak as though they are sucking their thumbs: they can’t articulate very well. Try it: put your thumb in your mouth and speak, that’s what the kids do: their tongue behaves as if their thumb is permanently in their mouth.

But Wait, There’s More!

The other bad news comes from dentists: there has also been a huge increase in cavities in really young toddlers and this in spite of compulsory fluoridization of water. The problem here is not with the cup itself but the fact that young children tend to constantly suck on those cups and therefore keep coating their teeth with sugary drinks. In case you think that the fruit juice you give to your little angel is not a sugary drink think again: just because sugar comes from fruit it is still sugar and you should still not have constant contact with it.

What To Do!!!!

Does this mean that you need to throw away all those no-spill-sip-cups? Not exactly, as always a little thought can go a long way. Consider the following points:

Sipping cups are great to teach little babies to drink unaided and helps their hand to mouth co-ordination, so they are an excellent device to start with. When your baby can expertly take the cup to her or his mouth, drink and put down the cup all by themselves, it is time to graduate to swill and gulp. For this you use the same cup but you take off the top. When they get good at it, you can use a normal cup.

This is not just going to be good for their speech and their teeth (and remember speech therapists and dentists are not cheap) but also for their appetite and stomach. It is REALLY BAD for the digestion to have lots of fluids always pumped into the stomach, so don’t keep feeding liquids to the kids in no spill tumblers or otherwise, it’s simply not good for them and destroys their appetite.

Just like you would not keep training wheels on a kids bike forever make sure your child graduates from the no-spill cup and you will avoid a lot of unnecessary problems.

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