Weaning
It is the process by which the child is shifted from an exclusively milk diet to other foods. It is started at the age of 4 months when liquids other than milk (e.g. juices, soups) and semi-solid foods (e.g. dal, rice) are introduced in the baby’s diet. Of course he still consumes milk, but as he starts consuming more and more of other foods, his milk consumption gradually decreases.
Caution: If there is a strong family history of allergy (e.g. skin allergies, urticaria, bronchial asthma, nasal allergy), it is prudent to exclusively breast-feed till the age of 6 months (no other milk should be given including milk tins). After that only the process of weaning should be started. This decreases the chances of allergy in the child.
In the initial 4 months, the baby requires only milk (not even water, let alone other things), as milk is the complete food for it till that time. If the climate is too hot, however, some water may be periodically offered to the baby. You will know that he is thirsty and not hungry by his rejection of the milk and avid sucking of the water. Adding glucose to water is of no use and is mentioned only to be rejected because the child requires only plain water to quench his thirst.
At 4 months, the baby is offered food that he can eat without having to chew it (a 4-month baby doesn’t have any teeth). You can give dal, juices, soups, mashed rice, mashed potatoes, soft boiled egg yolk etc. that you routinely prepare at home and which is mashed and soft. Egg white should be introduced at the age of 6 months as early introduction can lead to allergy.
There are a lot of commercial “baby foods” available like Cerelac, Nestum etc. Cerelac is a mixture of wheat and milk. You can prepare the same mixture at your house in the form of halwa (which constitutes wheat flour, milk, ghee and sugar). These commercial products have nothing special about them and giving them doesn’t make the baby stronger and healthier (as compared to home made foods). If at all, halwa is more nutritious and richer in calories than Cerelac, as it contains ghee and sugar in addition to milk and wheat flour.
So, commercial baby foods are not a must for your baby. The main advantage of them is that they are ready to prepare (e.g. add some water or milk to Cerelac powder and it is ready to be consumed), while making baby food at home is time consuming. Again it depends on the mother. Some mothers may take joy and pride in preparing different foods for their baby and find giving ready-made foods “dull”. The main disadvantage of the commercial foods is their cost. Home-made food preparations are cheaper. Practically, however, what one often sees is that mothers give a combination of marketed baby foods and what she prepares in the kitchen.
Balanced diet
There is a lot of concern about a balanced diet. The diet consists of 6 main ingredients and these are proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals, vitamins and water. A balanced mixture of these six components is required for an optimum and healthy growth. The requirements of each of these constituents are specified (in nutritional textbooks) and they depend on the age. It appears to me that we are so enamoured by what modern science thinks we ought to eat, that we tend to forget that our bodies have known this for millions of years.
Because of this, the mother wants her child to get a balanced diet. How can the mother be sure that the child is receiving a balanced proportion of the 6 “building blocks” of the body? After all, the child eats a variety of things. To calculate the quantity and the nutritional composition of each food item that the child takes and then compare them with standard nutritional tables is practically impossible on a day to day basis.
Fortunately calculations are not needed as what we eat daily tends to be balanced by itself over a period of time. Some people are vegetarians, some non-vegetarians. Some may be rice eaters, others’ staple diet may be dal and roti. People in different parts of the world have culturally different food habits. Yet all of them are healthy, don’t suffer from “imbalanced” diet and don’t become deficient in one of the constituents of nutrition (e.g. Proteins or Vitamins). Why? Because, of the simple reason that the diet tends to balance itself. Our appetite is so geared by nature that we don’t eat one constituent preferentially at the expense of other e.g., if there is too much fat in the food, you will find it heavy and disagreeable.
So what the parents should do is to offer the child a variety of foodstuff (like vegetables, fruits, cereals, meat, eggs, milk, legumes, dais etc), not necessarily all of them in one day but over a period of time, say a week. The child’s instincts and appetite is sound enough to pick a well balanced diet in the long run. Therefore mothers should not worry whether their child is getting a balanced diet or not, because he is!
Ideally, the baby’s weaning should be started with some form of cereal (e.g. rice or wheat). By the age of 6 months, the baby can take strained or pureed vegetables and fruits. Fruit juices can be given by a cup. It is better to start with vegetables first to reduce a tendency to develop a taste for sweets. By 8-9 months, pureed meat, pureed beans and lentils can be given. At this time, they want to pick up the food article between their fingers and love to munch on them.
The child may suck and chew at the food article with his bare gums even at the age of 5-6 months i.e. at the time of teething, because there is a lot of irritation of their gums and it soothes the irritated gums. As the food morsel softens gradually with their saliva, some of it goes into the stomach, enough to make them feel that they are getting somewhere. At a little older age, they will like to eat with the spoon. Initially they won’t meet with much success and most of the food will spill.
By 15 months, however, most of the children are adept enough to feed with the spoon without much spilling. Between 1-2 years, the child can usually take a mixed food diet and eats just like an adult member of the home. The only precaution to be taken is that foods which can cause choking should be avoided i.e. one should avoid large, round shaped, hard food items. The mother, by trial and error, can find out the likes and dislikes of the baby and thus know what to offer.