Natural Health

Early infancy nutrition

Kavita Mukhi

As I’ve written on several earlier occasions in this column, as a nutritionist, La Leche League (a voluntary organisation which promotes breastfeeding) leader and mother who breast-fed her child for almost three years, I believe a woman should not be allowed motherhood unless she agrees to breastfeed her baby for a minimum period of at least one year. And slow weaning is essential if children are to acquire the emotional strength which is so rare in contemporary youth.

David Rockefeller Jr. one of America’s truly wealthy, was so appreciative of the virtues of breastfeeding as the most perfect food nutritionally, he actually had wet nurses supply him with it. Obviously going so far is absurd and irrational self indulgence because however perfect breast milk is, it is best suited to newborn infants. Yes, it is a miracle of nature, but for infants only.

Many pages can be written on the virtues of breastfeeding and nature’s plan for perfection. But since I have done that before in these very pages, I will provide new perspectives about it another time. Until then I will assume that all infants are being breast-fed (on the dicey assump-tion that it’s a perfect world) and we will discuss supplementary feeding of newborns.

During my first pregnancy I remember a relative giving me unsolicited advice about how to feed my to-be-born. She advised cod liver oil in the third week of his life and egg yolk — all within the first month. Quite obviously I didn’t take her advice. Nevertheless I wasn’t an unusually anxious mother-to-be. Though I wasn’t well-versed about childbirth or childrearing (there’s a paucity of reading material on child nutrition even today), I believed that between my family and the doctor (i.e the gynac) I would be well advised. After all, mine wasn’t the first baby being born on earth.

As it turned out, I was wrong. Every individual had a differing view. My aunt-in-law had unnerved me because she had prompted me to believe that feeding a child needed a timetable, knowledge of nutrition and pre-planning beyond the capacity of a naïve new mother.

Lucky for me, my mother’s advice turned out to be simplest and best. A practical person who lived within her budget, she had the answer to all my naive queries. So much experience so close at hand! I know now that I have been fortunate to inherit her practical approach to life. This coupled with common sense, you just cannot go wrong.

In my book, common sense means what one feels or believes instinctively and intuitively. Though fast foods and fast track urban lifestyles dull common sense, if we contemplate deeply about how nature would have us react, there’s a good chance we’ll do right and give our children the best start in life.

Despite a lot of initial debate and confusion, it is common knowledge now even in the medical world that a baby needs nothing but mother’s milk for the first five months. Not even water. This is nature’s safeguard from all kinds of infections. And anytime after five months, the process of weaning can begin. The weaning process can carry on upto a time mother and child mutually decide that the nursing phase is over. La Leche League promotes baby-led weaning which takes into consideration how a child reacts, and puts her needs first. In any case a lot depends on when each child’s digestive capabilities allow her to absorb nutrients from foods other than mother’s milk which is perfectly suited for immature digestive systems.

It’s important to remember that every child is uniquely different. So the mother has to wait and watch, letting the child lead the weaning process. But the worst thing a mother can do is force an infant to eat. Indeed because I never force-fed my son, he developed a healthy appetite and to date, enjoys his food. Children who are forced to eat end up with one of the two problems: obesity and a life long battle with the bulge, or aversion to food.

The moral of the story is that attitudes to food are much more important than food itself. Being the example helps most in feeding your child correctly and more so, in developing nutritious eating habits. It is also the best policy to encourage your child to eat at home for a while, after his digestive enzymes become functional.

This is assuming what you eat at home is healthy. If not, you need to make it so, if you want the best for your child. For me, only the very best would do and hence all the trouble to study the true needs of the body and nature’s intent. Now I’m convinced that the best first foods are fruits (fresh, seasonal and organic), vegetable soups, brown rice, khichdi with rock salt and ragi or jowar porridge with powdered jaggery — all organic of course.

All these foods have to be tried serially and experimentally to gauge your child’s acceptance and digestibility of them. Also note that what she may not accept one day may be well accepted in a week. Offer a variety of foods and leave it to your child to instinctively choose. When a mother tells me that her child loves wafers and can’t stop eating junk food, I always ask, "Who introduced the child to it?" This is true of very young children, before peer pressure and subliminal advertising begin to influence them.

For many people such advice is trivial much ado about nothing and I’m often the butt of jokes for being over-cautious and anxious. But early infancy care and circumspection is crucial to give children a head start in life. You were designed for that in nature’s plan for perfection.

(Kavita Mukhi is a Mumbai-based eco-nutritionist and director of Conscious Food)