Feeding baby is a serious matter!

[30 December 2008 - 15h42]

Nine months and 18 months – two critical ages when it comes to feeding your baby. It’s usually at around the age of 8 to 9 months that follow-on milk is stopped and replaced by cow’s milk. Yet cow’s milk is not particularly well suited to an infant’s precise nutritional needs and can lead to anaemia due to lack of iron. Moreover, from the age of 9 months, the way parents see their baby begins to change. They often tend to try their little one with new and different foods. And the result is a risk of the baby becoming overweight because of excessive protein intake.

Between the ages of 15 and 18 months, doctors and parents become less involved in monitoring the food the baby eats. As babies grow, they come to share increasingly in family meals. And this is when nutritional imbalance can occur, in the form of nutritional excesses or deficiencies.

There’s nothing surprising there: in the Garnier-Delamare medical dictionary, the term ‘infant’ is applied to “a milk-fed child, during the period (…) from the loss of the umbilical cord to the age of two, when early childhood begins”. It’s important that parents follow two rules: at the ages of 9 months to 18 months, protein – ie meat, fish and eggs – should only be given once a day. And the key recommendation is to continue with follow-on milk up to the age of 12 months.

As for discovering new tastes and textures, these should be introduced gradually, at the baby’s own pace: first smooth textures, then finely mashed, and finally food containing small lumps. As for taste, remember that your baby’s sense of taste is very different from your own. Although ready-made baby foods may seem tasteless to us they are perfectly designed to meet your baby’s salt requirements. So never add any salt as this could be harmful to your baby’s health.

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