Our Baby News

Vitamins & Minerals Foods:
The need for infant vitamins is a confusing topic. Babies do need vitamins to grow well and to be healthy.

They need them for strong bones, healthy teeth, and to build up their blood and prevent anemia.

The confusing part is that most infants get all of the vitamins and minerals they need through the foods that they eat and drink, including vitamin A, calcium, zinc, and the vitamins and minerals discussed in this section.

So while they do need vitamins and minerals, they don’t always need a supplement each day, unless they were born prematurely or have some other health problem.

By about six months of age, a baby’s iron stores are low and extra foods will be needed to prevent later nutritional problems.

Start to introduce solids around six months of age – depending on the developmental needs of your child.

  Starting solids too early can cause problems

Simple Baby Food From :

We make our own baby food. At one to three dollars a jar where we live, it’s a no brainer decision. But even if it weren’t so expensive, I’d most likely make my son’s baby food anyway – it’s healthier, cheaper, and it’s very easy.

These homemade baby food recipes are simple and rewarding to make – become head chef for a very special little customer!

The benefits of making your own baby food are:

1. You know exactly what your baby is eating – none of the dreaded “fillers” commonly found in commercial baby food
2. You know that the ingredients are fresh and healthy
3. You can “tailor make” your baby’s food to best suit his/her preferences and needs
4. You will save money. These homemade baby food recipes cost a fraction of the price of ready made foods
5. And most importantly … making your own baby food is tremendously satisfying – for you AND your baby.

I thought it would be really difficult and time-consuming to make baby food, but that was before trying it with our firstborn. I was floored with how easy it was.

The best natural vitamins for your toddlers:

Toddlers are often fussy eaters. Feeding children vegetables and fruits is a cumbersome task for many mothers. Absence of a variety of plant products in the diet might deprive your child of essential micro nutrients needed for maintaining the physical and mental development process.

Toddlers on strict vegetarian diet might miss vitamins that are largely present in animal products.

Food sensitivity might cause deficiency Just like adults, toddlers need all types of vitamin sand minerals to lead a healthy life. While planning your child’s diet make sure that your child is getting adequate amount of the following vitamins.

Here Are Some Best Vitamins For Toddlers Vitamin A

Children need vitamins for lots of reasons. The most pressing reason to incorporate vitamins for toddlers is to bridge the gaps that likely exist from not eating perfect amounts of all of the food groups everyday. Even the perfectly planned meal may not get fully consumed if you have a picky eater.

Your pediatrician plays a very important role in your child’s life.
You’re entrusting your child’s health in his hands, and when you go to him—worried about a fever or a rash, and the dozens of other concerns about your child’s physical and mental development—you need to feel that you can trust him to hear you out, and give the best possible advice.

That’s why it’s so crucial to find a pediatrician that you feel comfortable with. It’s one of the biggest decisions you’ll make in the first year of your child’s life, and this article can help you make an informed choice.

One of the biggest factors for us with all care providers is making sure we find doctors who are supportive of our vegetarian lifestyle. Since we are choosing to raise our children as vegetarians as well, we need to make sure that our pediatrician will be supportive of our decision. Hopefully since we are in the very vegetarian-friendly city of Seattle, this shouldn’t be much of an issue!

Tips to Keep Children Healthy

Teach your child the importance of a healthy routine. The day should always begin with a healthy breakfast. Help the child to understand why breakfast times are important for the day. You can make a chart of different breakfast recipes and tell him/ her the importance of many vital nutrients for one’s body.

Your picky eater will enjoy this take on sandwiches.
It’s easy to make and your children can have fun creating their sandwiches with you!
1) Protein on the breakfast plate
Studies have shown regular breakfast eaters are at healthier weights compared to breakfast skippers.

Egg Sandwich Pocket – scrambled eggs with chopped peppers and tomato in whole-wheat pita pocket
Bean Breakfast Burrito – brown rice, pinto beans and cheese wrapped in whole grain soft tortilla
Veggie Pizza – slice of leftover vegetable cheese pizza
PB & raisin bagel – peanut butter and raisins (or other dried fruit) spread on mini whole-wheat bagel

2) Vegetables are “in”
While they may not be your kids’ favorite, veggies are the new hot ticket on both high end and fast food restaurant menus.Typically only highlighted in salads or as fried appetizers, vegetables are getting the special treatment usually reserved for chicken or beef:

3) There’s an app for that
It’s no surprise that the popularity of smartphones has more of us turning to apps for health, food and exercise guidance. “Mobile health” is a huge trend that continues to grow as more apps are created daily. So, how to navigate through the sea of apps? Just as you would a website, make sure that health professionals (doctors, nurses or registered dietitians) or educators are the ones behind the content.

Foods for Toddler
Breastfeeding is the best way to feed a new baby: breastmilk is the perfect food for babies, and breastfeeding is safer and cheaper than any milk which can be bought. Babies fed from the breast are more likely to be healthy and free from diarrhoeal diseases.

When our first few children were toddlers, we dreaded dinnertime. We would prepare all kinds of sensible meals composed of what we thought were healthy, appealing foods.

Most of these offerings would end up splattering the high-chair tray and carpeting the floor. To make matters worse, we took our kids’ rejection of our cuisine personally, sure that this was a sign of parental lapse on our part. What was wrong? Why were these kids such picky eaters?

Why toddlers are picky. Being a picky eater is part of what it means to be a toddler. We have since learned that there are developmental reasons why kids between one and three years of age peck and poke at their food.

After a year of rapid growth (the average one-year-old has tripled her birth weight), toddlers gain weight more slowly. So, of course, they need less food.

Creativity has been replaced with angst. You’ve tried again and again but each time you lose. Your kids refuse to eat their veggies, the veggies that you know they need to grow up strong and healthy.

Many babies cannot eat food in the form that older children and adults can and will not receive the proper nutrients they need to grow to be healthy.

As such, baby food allows parents to feed their babies fruits, vegetables and grains to get necessary vitamins and nutrients.

Some parents may make their own baby foods, which allow them to create personalized meals for their babies from fresh foods.

Special care should be taken when preparing foods for babies because they are more vulnerable to germs than are older children or adults.

1. Always wash your hands and equipment thoroughly before making baby food.

Around age seven to eight months, some babies start turning a little yellow. This is known as carotenemia.

This is because their diet becomes heavy in yellow vegetables such as squash, carrots, green or yellow beans, and yes, it does turn babies yellow!

The beta-carotene in these vegetables, a precursor of vitamin A, accounts for the vegetables’ yellow-orange color and it gets deposited in baby’s skin.

There is absolutely nothing unhealthy about it, but you might have to explain this over and over again to Grandma, and she may keep on bugging you even after you’ve seen your doctor. So be prepared.

Carotenemic skin is easily distinguished from jaundice, which is pathologic and indicates liver (or occasionally gallbladder) disease. Look at the eyes and gums.

Liver disease that is advanced enough to cause skin discoloration (jaundice) will also cause turn the eyes and the gums yellow.

How Much Food Should a Baby Eat?

Don’t forget that your baby is a little human being, and like all of us, she has her own appetite. This will influence to how much solid foods she will be eating.

As with adults, some babies will eat more than others due to their individual appetites. Below are a few key points to remember when feeding your baby.

From meal to meal, there is no good way to predict how much a baby is going to eat. Averaged out over the long term, some good rules of thumb emerge. Be as flexible as your baby, and use the following only as a general overview.

Cereal can be offered two or even three times a day, fruits and vegetables once or twice, and meats generally once a day. For snacks, offer half of the following portions:

                          5-7 MONTHS        8-10 MONTHS               10+ MONTHS

Cereal               2+tbsp                  1-2 oz                              2+ oz
Fruit                  1-2 tbsp                1-2 tbsp                         2-3 tbsp
Vegetables       1-2 tbsp               1-2 tbsp                         2-3 tbsp
Meat                   1 tbsp                   1-2 tbsp                         2 tbsp
Finger food                                   1/4-1/2 cup                    1/4-1/2 cup