Today is June 21 and that means that summer officially arrives. With summer, in the northern hemisphere, heat arrives (which many people read us from the southern hemisphere), and with the heat, there is an increase in the need for hydration in adults, children and babies.
This leads us to think that babies, like us, need water. However, it is not so. No need to give them water and it's not just a matter of being able to do without it or not, it's that if we give them, we run the risk of malnutrition.
Do babies who breastfeed need no more water?
Babies under 6 months who breastfeed do so, as recommended, exclusively. Exclusively and on demand, and this means that they don't need any external water source because everyone who needs it receives it from breast milk.
Breast milk is made up of 88% water, so when a baby eats, it is also drinking water, it is hydrating and nourishing at the same time and so it is not necessary to give it more than it receives with the breast.
In summer, with the heat, it is normal for them to be more thirsty, need more water, so babies tend to increase the frequency of feeding. That is to say, they ask for chest more times because they are thirsty, adding some short shots during the day to the usual shots. Have you not noticed that when it's hotter they ask for the breast, they suck for a little while and they let go? Well, that, thirst, they relieve with a little milk.
Babies who drink formula milk, don't they need more water?
Babies younger than 6 months who drink formula milk also need more water in summer, because it is hot, but they also do not need to be given water in a bottle because they already perceive it of the mixture between water and dust that we make when preparing the bottle.
They are 30 ml of water for each cup of powder, so if a baby takes for example 7 bottles a day of 120 ml, he is drinking the negligible sum of 840 ml of water daily.
If the baby needs more water, 30 ml per cup would not be recommended, but it would be said that he needs 35, 40, 50 ml per pot. Or that in winter 30 ml and in summer 40 ml. However, this is not the case, there is no such recommendation: the bottle is always prepared in a concentration of 30 ml per ladle.
If anything, just as breastfed babies do, we must take special care to give them the bottle on demand. Not every 3 hours, every 4 or according to the schedule someone has told us: when the baby asks. So maybe the frequency increases a bit and consequently you notice that you eat a little less per shot.
But why so much trouble with giving them water
Many people do not understand why so much emphasis is placed on preventing parents from giving babies water, with how good it is. Does it hurt them?
No, harm cannot be, because we have just said that they are receiving water, and enough, both when they are breastfed and when they drink artificial milk. What is it then? Well the risk of malnutrition because of how small their stomachs are.
As we explained in this post some time ago, the size of babies' stomachs is very small (pure logic). So small, that they don't eat much when they eat and, consequently, they should eat very often (A breastfed baby can make 8 to 12 shots every 24 hours, if not more). Do you know someone who eats 12 times a day? Me neither, but babies should do it that way because when they eat, they quickly digest what they have eaten and need to eat more. And what they eat must be a highly nutritious food with enough calories to provide them with what is necessary to live and what is necessary to grow: in a year they will triple their weight and measure 50% more than they measure at birth!
Well, to achieve all that, they need to eat, not drink water. If we give them water, if we are thirsty and drink water, we think they need the same thing (like when a mother is cold and plants a sweater for her son, who may not have it) and we give them a bottle of water, we run the risk of being drunk. And if they drink it, they will be filling their stomach with a very moisturizing liquid but nothing nutritious, occupying a space in which the milk cannot enter. What happens then? What do you get drink less milk a day, because everything does not fit.
I have explained this case on more than one occasion, but it was a headache for me for a while and, as such, it serves as a perfect example. A mother of African origin brought me to the nursing office for her baby and, I think I remember that with 3 months, I realized that, despite drinking exclusively breast milk, the weight was stalling. He earned little, but the mother said that everything was going well, that he sucked enough and took perfect.
I never found a cause that showed that stagnation, so I chose to continue controlling the weight and assess, if it was not solved, the possibility of making the girl analytical.
Month to month I weighed it until at 5 months, seeing that the inertia did not vary I spoke with the pediatrician to explain the case and ask for the blood test. Upon returning to the consultation I found the mother giving a bottle of water to the girl in which there was, quietly, 40 or 50 ml of water.
"Do you give him water !?" I asked surprised. "Yes, he loves it!" He told me. And that's how I discovered where the problem was. Once solved, the girl began to gain weight like a champion, recovering everything that the water had not let him win.
And after six months, or if you start earlier with complementary feeding?
Water should be offered to babies from 6 months, because it is the age at which they start the complementary feeding. If they start with it before, then they are offered water before. This is because at the time they eat other things they may be drinking less water.
Now, we must bear in mind that many of the foods we give them have a high percentage of water. Vegetables and fruit, for example, will hardly make the baby thirsty. So if we offer you water and you don't want it, you don't have to force it to drink it.
That is the recommendation: when starting with complementary feeding, offer some water in case you want. If you drink it, perfect, if not, then perfect too.
Photos | iStock
In Babies and more | Although it is very hot, it is usually not necessary to give water to babies before six months, when to start offering water to babies and how much ?, Do not give water to breastfed babies
