Baby Diet

Mother's breast milk is the primary source of nourishment to the new-born for at least 18 months. Human breast milk contains all the nutrients a baby needs including vitamins, minerals, amino acids, hormones, enzymes, essential fatty acids, carbohydrates and immune system factors.
You won't need a cookbook to help you feed your new baby, at least not for the first six months. For complete nutrition, your newborn just needs breast milk or infant formula whenever he's hungry. Feeding an older baby isn't complicated either at 4 to 6 months, you'll begin a gradual process of introducing your baby to regular table foods. From birth until her first birthday, your baby will grow more rapidly than at any other time in her life. For example, the average healthy full-term baby will weigh twice as much at six months as she did at birth and three times as much by age twelve months. Your baby's brain will increase in size more in the first year than at any other time. Feeding your newborn is theoretically the simplest aspect of baby care. Guidelines about food groups, the food pyramid, fat, and cholesterol in fact most of the rules that shape diet choices for older children and adults simply don't apply. Because of their rapid growth and their immature digestive systems, infants have their own unique nutritional needs.
Babies come into the world ready to nurse from their mother's breast, which provides a complete diet until they are 4 to 6 months old. Rapid growth requires proper nutrition. Breast milk supplies nearly all of the nutrients needed in infancy and is the ideal form of baby nutrition. If you chose to formula feed then your baby's diet will need to supply ample energy, vitamins, minerals and building blocks such as protein and fats for healthy growth. Providing the appropriate foods at the proper age may seem difficult, but here are some facts that will make this very important job easier. Infant formula doesn't provide the antibodies and other special components of breast milk, manufacturers do try to match closely most of its nutritional components. Formulas are changed regularly as manufacturers refine their products to reflect current research on nutrition. The most commonly used products are based on cow's milk that is modified to make it suitable for infants. For babies who can't tolerate cow's milk protein, there are formulas made from soy protein such as ProSobee, Isomil, Nursoy, and Soylac, and from hydrolyzed protein such as Nutramigen, Pregestimil, and Alimentum. Infant formula comes in ready-to-feed, concentrated liquid, or powdered form.

• Breast milk is designed by nature to feed human babies
• It changes daily to meet baby's needs
• It contains many beneficial components not found in formula and is more easily digested and better absorbed
• formula feeding may mean less frequent feedings
• formula feeding makes it easy to see how much your baby has eaten and makes it easy to feed baby in public or social situations