Before your baby is born he is protected within your womb from all infections and after birth breastfeeding takes over the protection process. The milk which you secrete for the first few days known as colostrum should be given to your baby as it provides resistance to your baby against various diseases and infections.

Your milk is made especially for your own baby. It is the right nutrition for the growth of your baby. It is easy to digest and it contains protective substances which help prevent infection especially loose stools. You can give it even when you are ill, pregnant or menstruating.

1. Like all mothers you can successfully breastfeed your baby, which is the most natural way to feed babies.

2. Mother’s milk is complete nutrition for the baby for first 6 months and your child should be exclusively breastfed during this period of time. No other milk, food, drink or even water is required.

3. Your baby should be breastfed immediately after birth preferably within 1/2 to 1 hour of birth.

4. Your baby should be breastfed unrestrictedly and on demand.

5. Your baby must be given Colostrum – the first yellowish mother’s milk during the first 2-3 days after birth.

6. Nothing should be given before the first breastfeed.

7. No pacifiers should be given to the baby.

8. You can continue breastfeeding during your sickness without any harm to the baby and yourself.

9. You should continue breastfeeding for two years or beyond.

10. Bottle-feeding is not necessary and even harmful for your baby. It is the leading cause of loose stools in babies.

11. Solid foods should be introduced only after 6 months of age.

12. Home-made, family food is better than commercial food for your baby.

13. Commercially available powder milks are always inferior to mother’s milk is recommended that all infants should be fed exclusively on breastmilk until they are six months of age and continued to be breastfed till 2 years or beyond. Breastfeeding is advantageous for all – you, your baby and the society.

Benefits your baby enjoys:

Breastfeeding provides numerous benefits to your baby which are as follows

1. Breastmilk contains adequate calories and provides the right kind of proteins, fats, lactose, vitamins, iron, minerals, water and enzymes in the amounts necessary for your baby.

2. Breastmilk contains iron, water soluble Vitamin D, Vitamin A, C and E more than cow’s milk.

3. Breastmilk is clean, free from bacteria and has anti-infective properties.

4. It also contains substances which prevent harmful bacteria from growing in intestines and causing loose stools.

5. It is ready to serve when the baby wants it, needs no preparation and it has the right temperature.  It is economical and free from contamination.

6. Breastfeeding enhances the emotional bond between the child and the mother and provides warmth, love and affection and is more than food.

7. Breastfeeding protects the child against several infections including respiratory infections.

8. Breastfed babies are less prone to have diabetes, heart diseases, eczema, asthma and other allergic disorders later in life.

9. Breastfed babies have been shown to have a higher IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and develop better mathematical abilities than infants who are not breastfed.

10. Breastfeeding enhances brain development. There is better visual development and visual acuity leading to learning readiness.

Benefits you enjoy as a mother:

Breastfeeding has many advantages to the mother, which include the following

1. It reduces post-delivery bleeding and chances of anemia.

2. Obesity is less common among breastfeeding mothers as it helps the mother regain her normal figure.

3. It has a contraceptive effect .

4. It has a protective effect against breast and ovarian cancers.

5. If you exclusively breastfeed your baby, you will have better adjustment with your baby.

Benefits the society enjoys:

Breastfeeding lowers health-care costs by reducing illness and deaths of children under five years of age and thus reduces the strain on the family budget. It helps in reducing absenteism of mothers from work as exclusively breastfed children are less prone to diseases. Thus, it will prove less costly to the employer.

Colostrum-The first few days of breastmilk

During the first few days after delivery you produce special milk known as colostrum which is thick, sticky and yellowish in colour. It is easily digestible, contains anti-infective elements to protect your newborn against infections. It stimulates your baby’s immature intestines to develop, in order to digest and absorb milk and to prevent the absorption of undigested proteins. Colostrum also has a mild “gut clearing effect”, which helps your baby’s gut to pass the first, very dark stool called meconium. It also helps to prevent jaundice by clearing the bilirubin from the gut. Although colostrum is secreted in small quantities (30-90ml), it is sufficient to meet the energy needs of a normal newborn during the first few days of life.

Mature milk:

• During the two weeks that follow the colostrum stage, the milk increases in quantity and changes in appearance and composition as per your baby’s needs, the protein content decreases while the fat and sugar content increases. At this time, your breasts may feel full, hard and heavy.
• Mature milk is thinner and watery but contains all the nutrients essential for optimum physical and mental development of the baby. The mature milk consists of hind milk and foremilk.

The milk which comes at the start of the feed is called foremilk. Foremilk, which is watery and bluish in color, has a low level of fat and is high in lactose, sugar, protein, vitamins, minerals and water. It satisfies your baby’s thirst and is produced in large amount than hind milk. You may sometimes worry that your milk is too thin. Milk is never “too thin”. It is important for you to give both foremilk and hind milk to provide complete meal and water that your baby needs.

Hindmilk is the milk which comes later in a feed, is richer in fat and this extra fat makes it look whiter than foremilk. It satisfies the baby’s hunger and supplies much of the energy required. Therefore, it is important not to take your baby off the breast too quickly.

Breastfeeding is the most natural thing for every mother. It is a unique experience to be cherished. Sometimes certain simple problems faced by mothers result in stoppage of breastfeeding or giving of supplements of animal milk/commercial infant formula to the baby. Problems may be like flat nipples, inverted nipples, breast engorgement, swelling, sore nipples or not enough milk etc. These problems are preventable if due care is taken from the pregnancy period to prepare for breastfeeding.

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A New Year is beginning, when conversations about goals and resolutions abound. What if you could have a different conversation with your children this year that gave them tools on how to choose what will contribute to their future and empower them to know what they know?

As the mother of three, two now into adulthood, I can remember the times when at least one of my children would come home with a school assignment on New Year’s resolutions. These assignments were not fun for my kids or me. I had never liked  goal setting, it never made sense when it was asked of me and my kids had a similar point of view about these assignments.

How can you start a conversation with your kids about what they would like to create for this year and beyond? What question can you ask your children to create a future of possibilities instead of barriers to the conversation? Start by talking to them about having targets instead of setting goals. Ask your children, “what are your targets for this year?”

The problem with resolutions or goals is that they set in place an immovable decisions about the future when in actuality our futures are full of change. These decisions allow for very little wiggle room and if your children are anything like mine then you know wiggling is something they like to do often.

Goals lead to judgments. Judgement of whether you have achieved the goal or failed. They are mostly a measure of failure. A goal will stop you from seeing anything  greater or different.  You cannot even invasion anything that does not match the point of view of your goal.

When you look at the energy of a target it is different, less fixed, it has more wiggle room. It does not lock you down. A target gives you the energy of what you are aiming for and you can always be checking with how you are doing towards achieving the target.If you want to change it, move it or something really different. Targets are more creative, you can shoot past a target which could lead you to something even more fun. If you get close to your targets you are still creating it, with a goal you can only judge you have not met it.

Children’s futures are full of possibilities. My children’s realities are full of ideas, some they created, some that become uninteresting and some that are yet to actualize. Their ideas were and are fabulous and all over the place. “Mom I’m going to be a surgeon who works on babies in the womb” “Mom I am going to make the first flying car” “Mom I am going to animate Disney movies.” “Mom let’s get an elephant.” “Mom, I’m going to be a mermaid.”

If your target is being a Mermaid then you can play with how to be one. You can put your sister in a bathtub and have her drink salt water. (This is one way to become a mermaid that I did not know of). Now if it does not work and it is a target, then you and not wrong just because you still have legs, you can keep shooting for it. You can find out there are actual professional mermaid jobs at amusement parks that actually pay well and now you have a new mermaid target. If this is a goal then you are left judging your untailed legs and your sister for making you drink salt water.

Once you have the conversations going you can ask also ask your kids, “if you choose this what will your future be like in a year, a week, in 10 years? So they can begin to know what they know about creating the future they desire.

These are wonderful tools to have and the more your kids use them the bigger the muscle of knowing what their choices will create becomes. What a gift to have this as a kid! To be able to trust your knowing and to know that choice creates awareness!

The most important thing you can give your kids is the understanding that their point of view is okay.

~ Gary Douglas, Conscious Parenting Conscious Kids

Dr. Glenna Rice
glennarice.com
accessconsciousness.com/drglennarice

The post How do you talk to your kids about their future? appeared first on Health Vision.