ARTIFICIAL DIET FOR INFANTS.
Artificial diet for infants should be like the normal breast-milk, this can be obtained by mixing the right quantity of cow milk, water and sugar i.e. cow milk 2/3, boiled water 1/3 and sugar to taste. This meal/diet can be used for a baby for the first six months, then other types of nutritious food can be introduced.
In infancy, mothers have cultivated the habit of giving babies thick gruel, biscuit powder and few others, thinking that food of lighter weight will not nourish. It’s a mistake, this foods are too solid and tend to be heavy in the stomach thereby causing indigestion, griping etc. All these creates an avenue to introduce purgative medicine, which weaken digestion further. However, many babies are kept in frequent round of indigestion, griping and purging. If their diet or meals have been in the right qualities and quantities that their digestive organs can take, they won’t be need of help from a medical expert.
In getting this diet or meal done, it is very important to get pure cow milk, not skimmed milk or milk mixed with water but the fresh warm milk directly from the cow. The fresh milk should not be pre-mixed with water nor sugar until its needed and only what the child can take should be prepared at a time. Thus, the meal must be prepared fresh at all times. Heating the milk is also prohibited but the water should be in boiling state.
As a child tends to grow, the amount of milk may increase gradually, this is occur during the second month or more, 1/3 of milk to water may be applied. When there is a sign of good improvement in appearance and health of the child there is no change of diet. Basically, in early life of children they needed variety of food, nature only prepare one kind of meal or food (breast milk). It might be a little bit difficult to change this law without causing one harm or the other.
There are apparently two ways to feed an infant; by spoon and by nursing bottle. The first may not be introduced at this period since the digestive organ are still weak in infant, and their food by default is meant to be taken slowly, by sucking from the breast; saliva is produced, is mixed with the milk and then swallowed down to the stomach. These process of nature should be followed, food should be giving using a nursing bottle; it is sucked gently and ensure mixture of adequate saliva, which is aid digestion. All bottles used should always be clean.
The amount of food given to a child should be judged by the age of the baby and its ability to digest food. Experience is much needed in this area and observing others to determine this. As a child grows older, the quality and quantity should increase
The most common mistaken in raising a child is overfeeding, and it’s always serious. But it can be avoided by the care giver or nursing mother by following a systematic plan in-line with the hours of feeding, indication of appetites, giving the food slowly and in small amounts or quantities at a time. By doing this, it prevents indigestion, purging, griping so common in infancy, and thereby helping the child have a healthy nutrition.
The time interval or frequency of administering food must be determined, allow time space between each food will help to ensure digestion of food taken earlier; it can be placed between every three to four hours. If we don’t follow this rule and fresh food is giving to the child frequently like every hour, there won’t be more time for the previous meal to digest and as a result of this, the food that goes to the bowel undigested will ferment and be sour and causes purging and therefore in no way nourishes the child
Posture of the child when been fed; this is also an important aspect to take care of, there are certain positions or posture good for feeding an infant. Meals should not be administered when the child is lying, the head of the infant should be raised on the mother’s arm or care givers arm, this posture is the most common or natural position, and positions where there won’t be danger of food moving to the wrong part. After each feeding, the baby should be repose on its mother or giver givers knee for at least thirty (30) minutes. This helps digestion and little some exercise can be introduced to promote healthy living.
As teeth begins in a child, during this time one or two will show, solid farinaceous matter boiled in water, sieved and mixed with little amount of milk, may be used. Or tops and bottoms, with hot water, with some fresh milk and sugar to taste. And you can now introduce spoon for the first time.
When you discover one or two large grinding teeth, the same food above may continue without sieving. Chicken broth and beef tea may be introduced. As time goes on, complete animal diet is required, boiled egg, small bread pudding, made with egg, may be introduced.
There is this common thing parents do during this period is to give their kid(s) animal food, it is a mistake. Feeding an infant with animal food before it has teeth to chew properly, it shows we don’t respect to nature, in restricting such teeth till the body system needs their help to work on solid foods. And the common method of grating and pounding meat, instead of chewing may be suited to Toothless octogenarian, whose is able to digest it; but the stomach of an infant is not able to do the digestion of such food, thereby causing disorder.
It can’t be maintained that a kid’s toothless mouth and that of adults, full of teeth of both carnivorous and graminivorous animals, are predesigned by nature to eat food. If chewing of food either vegetable or animal and proper mix of saliva, which is essential for digestion, this can’t happen if mastication is not done properly. When food is swallowed in large quantity, it cannot be chewed at once and will have a small chance of digestion and when it is in an indigested form, it can be harmful to the stomach and other organs which aid digestion. Giving babies without teeth solid foods, is not less absurd, until you expect corn to be grinded when there is no equipment for grinding it. In this case it could be insane, when this have been practiced before. To be safe guided from this tragedy, solid food, ne it vegetable or animal should be broken into smaller quantities, and then given slowly to the infant and mixed with saliva to aid easy digestion.
This diet should continue until the second year. Upmost care, is required and its management, thereafter, the infant is moving to the stage of teething, which is most likely to come with some disorder of the system. In this particular time, error in meal of the child should be total or most carefully avoided. There is a fact on ground about the infant, who is of a good health record and very energetic, whom has been cared for with natural breast of the parent, now starts Artificial Diet or meal for the first time, disorder is in this infant is scarcely perceptible, apart from the operation of every causes. Not so, with a kid who has just be feed for the very first time with artificial diet or food. Teething in infants at this stage, is comes with more or less discomfort of the frame, and some diseases tend to show up. At this age, all kinds of fever is common, worms, diarrhea, cutaneous eruption, purging etc begin to develop themselves. A proper maintenance of diet will block some of these arising complaints and fight the effect of other when they surface..
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