Feeding a newborn is quite easy. Or they take the breast or take the bottle, so the only thing to do is give them milk when they are hungry, that is, on demand, without taking too much into account no schedule or routine.
After reading this first paragraph many mothers will be thinking "well, and every 3 hours if you give a bottle", which as we said a while ago, is not quite the correct recommendation, because although many children ask for a bottle every 3 hours because it is time When they are hungry, many ask for it every 2 hours and others do it every four hours. It makes no sense to starve the former, nor does it make sense to feed a baby who is not yet hungry (although this would be less problematic).
The doubts come when the baby turns six months old and the mother comes home with a sheet given by the pediatrician in which she explains what her baby can start eating and what are the schedules of babies at lunchtime.
“I can't get a routine with my baby”
Many mothers begin to give complementary feeding to their children at six months and realize how difficult it is to feed a baby according to planned schedules. When you give him the food he does not feel like it and when you do not have it prepared it turns out that he seems to be hungry, a few days he eats at 12 noon and another does not want anything until he is given at 15 in the afternoon.
Then, in this lack of control, the mother feels that something is failing and doubts appear: “Will I be giving her a lot?”, “I will be giving her little?”, “What is the best time for her to eat?”, “ Why don't you want even the first scoop today? ”
Food on demand, common sense and patience
When we talk about babies the best remedy for almost all evils is common sense. The problem is that sometimes the doubts are so great and the fear of doing so badly so powerful that we dare not pay attention to logic.
It is very common for babies not to have schedules because they simply do not need them. Babies suck on demand for a simple reason: they know better than anyone when they need to breastfeed and how much they need to drink. They know it better than their mothers and better than their pediatricians.
Likewise, 6-month-old children know when they have to eat and how much they want to eat, and they know it better than their mothers and better than the instruction sheet that the pediatrician gives to the mother, which is nothing more than a photocopy of a paper that is given to all 6-month-old children, as if they were all the same.
Well, just like the day I ate in a restaurant in Asturias and they told me “but how little do the Catalans eat!”, Because I left a lot of food and could not do more, not all babies have to eat the same amount.
Moreover, as adults we tend to eat only what we like (I still don't know anyone who says: I'm going to eat this vegetable dish, which makes me sick “what for what”), babies also tend to Eat only what they like. And at first, as they know hardly any flavors, they are usually very few things.
Therefore, by common sense, Babies have to eat whatever they want and at the time they feel like it, that is, on demand.
The food is called complementary, because it complements
I know you will be thinking that of course, if they decide they will not eat anything, and if they have given you those leaves it will be because they have to eat it. Well, no, the reality is that complementary feeding is nothing more than the food that is given to the baby so that he gradually begins to eat, but not because he needs it imperiously (on the last day of his sixth month of life he only drank milk and the next day it turns out that he needs a lot of food ...).
In other words, complementary feeding is called that because it is a complement of milk, which is still the main food of babies.
The food has to be offered to babies, from six months, but not imposed. Little by little, day by day (or week by week), babies are eating more and they do it at the time they most want to do it (they know that).
The schedules and routines will be arriving. Probably the day it feels to eat with you at the table start eating according to your same schedule. Well, that day will come, there is no hurry ... or perhaps the women who lived in the caves went out to look at the position of the sun to calculate if their baby had to eat now?
