Ok here it is, why you shouldn’t put cereal in a babies bottle, but before we start I want you to remember yesterday’s post about the sleep cycle and stages of sleep for a baby up to 4 months. Putting cereal or solid foods into the bottle does not change these and in turn does not make babies sleep longer. So let’s look at this a little closer and look at all the reasons why we shouldn’t do this.
In the first 6 months of life babies NEED breast milk or formula if they do not get a sufficient amount they will not be getting the proper nutrients. When babies are given solid foods in this time period they in turn want to drink less breast milk or formula which may lead to improper nutrition.
Now let’s look at this a little bit further we’ve already determined that there is no nutritional need for solid foods in the first 6 months, babies also do not start sitting up independently until about 6 months. In order to be able to swallow solid foods properly babies need to use both gravity and their muscles while staying upright the entire time. For this reason making the hole in a bottle nipple bigger and putting solid food into it, posses an increased risk of the baby choking or aspirating on the food. This is true of all solids not just solids given in a bottle.Research shows that giving babies solid foods before 6 months of age may increase the risk of health problems, allergies, eczema and early research shows that there may be a link between early introduction to solid foods and celiac disease.So when and how should you introduce solid foods to your baby?
💐They can sit up independently with out falling over.
💐They have good head control.
💐They are around 6 months of age.
💐They are showing interest in foods.
There are two ways you can introduce solid foods to your baby when they can check off all the bullets above. You can introduce them by offering them spoon fed purees or you can introduce them to solids by using baby-led weaning (this is my favorite method well talk more about that later) either option is fine. In the beginning try to only introduce 1 new food every 3 days so that you can monitor any reaction that the baby may be having to foods.
Photo credit: Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash Photo credit: Fanny Renaud on Unsplash
Comments