Making your own BABY FOOD.

Baby food doesn't have to come in jars. You can make your own at home, and it's not difficult. Making your own baby food is easy, efficient, and economical. Instead of spending money on prepackaged baby food, you can use fresh produce, grains, and meat that you have on hand. Best of all, you'll know exactly what you're feeding your baby. Three good reasons for making your own baby food are:

• You know what's in it.
• You know that the ingredients are fresh and healthy.
• You can custom-tailor the texture to your baby's taste preferences.
• You can shape your baby's tastes and help her learn what fresh foods taste like.
• You will save money. These homemade baby food recipes cost a fraction of the price of readymade foods.
• And most importantly, making your own baby food is tremendously satisfying for you and your baby.

TIPS FOR MAKING YOUR OWN BABY FOOD

• Buy organic fruits and vegetables. Your baby deserves pesticide-free foods. Scrub fruits and vegetables extra well with a vegetable brush. Trim stringy parts and remove any part of the food that could cause choking, such as pits, peels, and seeds. Trim excess fat off poultry and meat.
• Steam vegetables. This softens them, makes them easier to chew, and preserves more of the vitamins and minerals than boiling.
• No need to add salt or sugar. Try a bit of lemon juice as both a preservative and a natural flavor enhancer.
• Avoid deep-frying, which adds unhealthy fats to foods.
• Don't feel you have to prepare separate meals for your baby. You can simply take portions of your adult food (before you add any strong seasonings) and grind or mash to a stage appropriate for your baby.
• Make enough for several meals at a time and pour the freshly-cooked and pureed food into an ice cube tray. Cover with cellophane wrap and freeze. Then, remove the frozen food cubes from the tray and store in air-tight freezer bags. Remove one serving-size cube at a time when needed.
• When baby graduates from cube-size portions, store the homemade food in recycled commercial baby food jars or small, plastic, freezer containers. Be sure not to fill the jars to the brim, as food expands as it freezes.
• Label all your freezer packages with contents and date and rotate stock like the supermarket does – putting the most recently frozen foods behind the previously frozen ones. Homemade baby foods can be safely kept frozen for three months.
• For slow thawing, place a day's worth of baby food in the refrigerator. It will thaw in about four hours. For fast thawing, use an electric warming dish or place a heat-safe dish over water in a small saucepan and heat gently.
• If you use a microwave to thaw or warm baby food, be sure to stir the food well to avoid hot pockets.
• No matter what method of heating and thawing you use, stir the food well and test it with your finger to be sure it's not too hot.
• To avoid wasting your carefully prepared cuisine, dole out small portions. Gradually add more, using a clean spoon as needed.

Always consult your pediatrician prior to beginning any new food for your infant. Discuss making homemade baby food with your pediatrician regarding what foods to introduce to baby and when.

How Breastfeeding Benefits Mothers

Breast milk remains the healthiest food for your baby. The benefits of breast milk for babies are numerous. What's good for baby is also good for mother. When mothers follow nature's lead and breastfeed their babies, their own bodies benefit too. The benefits of breastfeeding also appear to stay with mothers for years to come, lowering risks of cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Reduces the risk of breast cancer. Women who breastfeed reduce their risk of developing breast cancer by as much as 25 percent. The reduction in cancer risk comes in proportion to the cumulative lifetime duration of breastfeeding. That is, the more months or years a mother breastfeeds, the lower her risk of breast cancer.

Reduces the risk of uterine and ovarian cancer. One of the reasons for the cancer-fighting effects of breastfeeding is that estrogen levels are lower during lactation. It is thought that the less estrogen available to stimulate the lining of the uterus and perhaps breast tissue also, the less the risk of these tissues becoming cancerous.

Lessens osteoporosis. Non-breastfeeding women have a four times greater chance of developing osteoporosis than breastfeeding women and are more likely to suffer from hip fractures in the post-menopausal years.

Benefits child spacing. Since breastfeeding delays ovulation, the longer a mother breastfeeds the more she is able to practice natural child spacing, if she desires. How long a woman remains infertile depends on her baby's nursing pattern and her own individual baby.

Promotes emotional health. Not only is breastfeeding good for mother's body, it's good for her mind. Studies show that breastfeeding mothers show less postpartum anxiety and depression than do formula-feeding mothers.

Promotes postpartum weight loss. While you're pregnant, your body automatically layers on extra fatty tissue so you'll have enough fat stores to begin and support breastfeeding. After you have your baby, however, if what you eat is varied and well balanced, breastfeeding can help you lose your pregnancy weight without compromising either your health or your baby's by dieting. And you naturally burn calories to make breast milk every time you nurse. Breastfeeding mothers showed significantly larger reductions in hip circumference and more fat loss by one month postpartum when compared with formula-feeding moms. Breastfeeding mothers tend to have an earlier return to their pre-pregnant weight.

Baby Feeding Guide : Birth To 2 year ( Baby Foods)

Baby Foods Guide Chart

• Baby Foods Tips At Birth To 6 Months.

• Baby Foods Tips From 6 To 9 Months.

• Baby Foods Tips From 9 To 12 Months.

• Baby Foods Tips From 12 To 24 Months.

Baby Foods At Age : 12 to 24 months

At this stage child starts using spoon or their hand for feeeding.

You can feed babies:

1. Milk
2. Soft cheese
3. cereals like pulses, rice, wheat, oats
4. Fruits
5. Egg
6. Fish
7. vegetables, vegetable soup
8. Citrus and non-citrus juice
9. You can try normal mashed food what rest of the family eat

Some doctors recommendcaution when it comes to introducing foods. If you're concerned that your child might have an allergy to certain foods, introduce them one by one and keep an eye out for an allergic reaction. And if it is noticed immediately consult doctors.

Nourishment for Your Newborns : A serious issue.

At some point throughout pregnancy, women need to think about how they plan to feed their child. But how do you decide what is best for your baby's growth and development?

How does breastfeeding benefit your baby?

Researchers have found that breastfed babies have higher IQs of at least five points higher then formula fed infants. Researchers account 40% of the increase due to maternal bonding and the other 60% is from the nutritional value of the breast milk itself. Babies who were nursed up to six months saw the greatest increase, while babies who were nursed for two weeks or less showed no IQ benefit. The effects are long-lived and last through childhood and adolescence.

Researchers from the National Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have found that the more breast milk infants receive in the first six months of life, the less likely they are to suffer ear infections and diarrhea.

Researchers in Australia did a study of more than 2,000 children and found that exclusive breastfeeding for at least four months after birth reduced a child's risk of developing asthma by age 6.

Researchers at Ludwig Maximillians University in Munich (Germany) did a study of 9,357 children between the ages of 5 and 6, and found that children who were breastfed exclusively as babies (even for as little as three to five months) had a 35 percent lower chance of being obese than their formula-fed peers.

During a study of more than 2,200 children, it was discovered that those who were breastfed as babies were 21 percent less likely to develop two of the most common types of leukemia - acute lymphoblastic and acute myeloid leukemia - than children who were never breastfed. The longer breastfeeding continued the more protection the child seemed to have against the cancer.

How does breastfeeding benefit you?

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that breastfeeding cuts the risk of breast cancer by 20 percent in women aged 20 to 49 and by 30 percent in women aged 50 to 74, regardless of duration. They think that structural changes in breast tissue caused by breastfeeding may protect against cancer.

Researchers from the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan studied 110 women, aged 20 to 40, all of whom gained about 35 pounds during pregnancy. Monitoring the women's weight at several intervals from birth to 18 months afterwards, the researchers found that those who breastfed lost weight more rapidly than their non-breastfeeding counterparts did. After 18 months, though, the rate of weight loss was almost the same for the two groups.

Healthcare professionals cannot say enough about the health benefits of breastfeeding. If you and your baby are both healthy and able, you may want to give nursing a try, at least for the first few weeks, so your natural immunities can be passed to your child. Alternatively, consider doing both. Many women combine breastfeeding and formula feeding.

Even though breastfeeding has many, many benefits there are plenty of reasons why women choose formula over breastfeeding:

• Having a baby with a poor sucking reflex which is common in premature babies.
• Prolonged mother-infant separation .
• Painful nursing.
• The fear that your baby isn't getting enough milk .
• The need to return to work .
• A health problem that requires medication that shouldn't be passed to the nursing infant .
• A desire to involve other family members in the feeding process.

Formula feeding with a bottle is a healthy choice for babies too, either right from the start or after nursing. If you are concerned about your choice, try to separate medical facts from the political and cultural rhetoric. Remember, the most important thing you can do for your baby is love and nurture her, and that includes feeding her in the way that you choose.

Formula products today are designed to nutritionally simulate breast milk as closely as possible. While they cannot pass along the resistance to infection that breast milk does, formulas provide ample nourishment for a growing baby. Most formulas are based on cow's milk or soybeans. Any formula you choose should be iron-fortified to prevent anemia.

Baby Nourishment :Healthy Foods for Healthy Baby

After your baby's birth, you are often puzzled how to treat your baby in the best possible way for your new born child to grow healthy and happy. The choice of products offered for the baby is overwhelming, and making a decision on what to buy may even be harder than caring the child. Your selection of products should not be based on a famous brand or a price tag, but what the actual benefit of its functions and what will suits your baby. Before you buy another baby food jar, or another bubbly soap, find out what's inside.

At 4-6 months of age, babies open a whole new world of tastes and textures and are ready to start mouthing and chewing "solid food”. This is the golden period when you can start introducing new products. It is best to choose the most natural foods as your baby will develop love for the flavors and will actually prefer them in the future.

It is true that commercial baby food is convenient, but the price tag for convenience may be too high - the health of your rapidly growing shiny star. When you buy commercial processed foods, as natural as they may seem, they are often diluted with water and starchy fillers such as tapioca, rice flour and modified corn starch. Even the companies producing organic baby food use fillers.

What's more, most baby foods have added water, sugars, salt, and may contain trace amounts of chemicals, including pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. These are not essential or beneficial to your baby's diet.

Processed foods lose nutrients and livelihood of the natural ingredients put in them due to exposure to light, heat, and long storage time. A little jar of vegetable puree with a 2-year shelf life does not compare to the smell, taste, color and vitality offered by garden-fresh nature's gifts that have been steamed and mashed and served from your own kitchen.

Try avoid the introduction of these foods until your child is much older and nourish your offspring with homemade baby food that is pure and wholesome. The bright side of preparing baby food at home is that you can add herbs, combine flavors, and easily introduce new textures, making your baby's mealtime a pleasurable, gourmet experience.

Baby Nutrition - Foods to Avoid

Citrus: Introducing citrus fruits and juices before age 1 may provoke an allergic reaction, especially if allergies run in your family.

Egg whites: Your baby can eat egg yolks now, but wait a year or two before giving the protein-rich whites because she may be allergic to them.

Honey: Honey can harbor spores of Clostridium botulinum, which may lead to botulism in children. While an adult's intestinal tract is able to prevent the growth of these spores, babies and children have don't have a fully developed immunity, so the spores can grow and produce life-threatening toxins.

Peanuts and Tree nuts (like pecans and walnuts) peanut butter: Nuts and peanuts which are considered to be legumes are highly allergenic and are often not well-tolerated even by grow-ups. Rather than risk a violent allergic reaction, wait a few years before introducing these. The majority of children can start with nuts and peanuts pureed in food or in nut butters at one, but the sticky consistency can make it tough for a young child to swallow safely. Whole nuts and pieces of nuts may turn from a nourishing addition into a choking hazard.

Wheat or wheat products: Wheat is the most common grain allergen and most babies can start only tolerate it starting at 6-8 months from birth. Besides, there are plenty of better choices of complex carbohydrates - buckwheat, quinoa, spelt and oats.

Shellfish: Excluding shellfish from your baby's diet until his first birthday is a good idea since shellfish is a very common allergen. Just to be on the safe side, you may even want to wait for 3 or 4 years before you serve the first shrimp salad to your lovely kid.

Other potential food allergens: Don't rush into including corn, soy, chocolate, cow's milk or anything else your digestion and immunity can't fight. After all, if these foods don't make you feel well, how can they be beneficial to your child? You can safely nurture your baby with most pureed fruit for desserts and cereals, except citrus, cooked and mashed vegetables added to home-cooked natural cereals mixed with beans, peas, lentils. Use herbs and spices instead of salt and remember that when it comes to sugar - your baby is already sweet enough!

If you're breastfeeding, avoiding potential allergens in your own diet may help in delaying or preventing allergies in your baby.

Baby Foods At Age: 9 to 12 Months

It is important to note that not all babies will be eating the same amounts as others, nor will they be eating the same foods. This is due to the differing ages that babies start solid foods as well as the fact that all babies are not the same.  Your baby will eat as much solid foods as your baby needs. Breast Milk and/ or formula are the most important sources of nutrition for your infant up to 12 months old. Do not replace a nursing or bottle-feeding with a solid food meal and do not feed the solids first until your pediatrician suggests. Baby when they are at 9 to 12 months old, we need to decide there foods options. So you do not need to worry about it.You can give meals three times a day to your baby. Babies need the same variety of nutrients what adults need. In this age of the baby you can give fruits and vegetables daily. Babies in this age still drink Breastmilk .And also give extra protein  to your child in the form of chicken, fish, eggs,beans,etc.

You can give these foods to your baby. For Example: 

• Green Peas, 
• Green Beans,  
• Sweet Potatoes,
• Bananas,
• Cooked tomatoes, 
• Fruit juice,
• Soft Breads,
• Eat cereal,
• Cooked noodles, 
• Rice

Food Chart for 9 to 12 Months
Foods	6 to 9 Months
Breast Milk	Nursing on demand
Formula	Bottle feed of formula or whole cow milk
	3-4 feeds per day
Iron-fortified single-ingredient food	A variety of infant cereal
Other grain product	Plain cereals, Bread, Rice, Pasta
Meat and alternative	Minced or diced cooked meat, fish, chicken, tofu, beans or egg yolk.
	3 to 4 tablespoons / 45 to 60 ml per day
Vegetables	Minced or diced cooked vegetables.
Fruits	Soft peeled and diced fresh or canned fruit
Milk products	Plain yogurt
	Cottage cheese or grated hard cheese

At this stage babies should enjoy 3 meals of 1 cup of food and 3 milk feeds of 200ml each per day. It is important that in each meal following quantity should contain:

• Starchy foods like cereal/grain, potato/pasta or bread,
• fruit and vegetables
• protein food like dairy, meat, fish or egg.

Which baby foods can your baby eat around 9 - 12 months:

• Finger food like sandwiches, slices of toast, cheese sticks, slices or sticks of steamed veggies, pieces of fruit such as strawberries, mango and banana.
• Pasta and spaghetti with sauce, tofu, casseroles, vegetable omelets, patties, baked beans, cereals with milk and yoghurt.

Baby Foods At Age: 6 to 9 Months

 Babies at 6 months of age, start liking the solid foods. They start eating cereals , fruits and vegetables. At this stage babies want to play with food and want to eat by them selves. 

In this period first teeth of the baby erupt or about to be erupted. Babies feel  irritation of gums and they like to put anything which they can get hold in their mouth. This is a cause of loose motion during this period. A biscuit can be given to the baby to suck at it ,or a Teether  can be given to the child to chew at it with their bare gums. Other things which can be given to your baby are :-

• Chapathi soaked in milk can be given.
• Eggs can be given during this period.  2-3 eggs  in a week are sufficient.
• Vegetable Shoups can be given.
• Orange juice 2 to 3 spoons in a day can be given.
• Mashed potato can be given to boiled .