After months of looking forward to her birth, your baby is finally with you. But you also feel it’s high time you got back into your pre-pregnancy clothes. Hold on! Now you are breastfeeding and the baby depends on you for all her nutrition and growth. It is your responsibility to ensure that you take… [ Continue Reading ]
The most likely reason for milk drying up is the inhibition of the ejection reflex (the mechanism by which milk is ejected from the breast). This reduces the production of milk and gradually stops it completely. Often, the drying up has psychological reasons behind it — when people ask the mother whether her milk has… [ Continue Reading ]
Your grandmother, or even your mother, may have fed the baby whenever the baby seemed hungry or cried. This is called the self demand schedule. Later, it must have become customary to feed the baby at fixed times according to the clock, three hourly for a baby below 3 kg and four hourly for a… [ Continue Reading ]
Fruit juice is likely to get infected unless extracted with great care. Breast milk has sufficient vitamin C in it; but for a baby fed on cow’s or buffalo’s milk, this can be given as multivitamin drops. Babies love fruit juice so you can start orange, malta or mosumbi juice at about four to five… [ Continue Reading ]
Most babies suckle easily and naturally. They are born with the suckling reflex. To start the suckling reflex, a stimulus has to touch the baby’s hard palate. The stimulus is provided by the nipple, which has to be offered to the baby. But, occasionally a baby has to learn to suck. Especially in cases where… [ Continue Reading ]
Breast feeding is instinctive and most mothers take to it naturally. However, a lot of mothers switch over to formulae at the slightest problem. One of the most common causes cited for resorting to top feeds is inadequate milk production. Primary lactation failure is an extremely rare event. Usually it is due to secondary causes…. [ Continue Reading ]
The milk supply increases from about 100 ml on the second day to about 500 ml in the second week and more slowly thereafter. Some mothers get very panicky as to whether the baby is getting enough breast milk. I have known mothers who weighed the baby after every feed or at least every day…. [ Continue Reading ]
The phone rang at 5 am on Sunday morning. Sleepily I picked it up thinking it would be an emergency call from the hospital. To my surprise it was my friend Seema from Singapore. “Geeta, I am pregnant! Can you believe it?” she exclaimed loudly. After 10 long years! Naturally she was overjoyed, as it… [ Continue Reading ]
The feeding problems of infancy or early childhood include: Anorexia Regurgitation Pica Anorexia Of all behaviour problems anorexia is most common in children. But it can be easily prevented and cured. A mother’s most common complaint is that the child does not eat anything. The mother says she has tried everything to make him eat…. [ Continue Reading ]
The primary aim of milk banking is to supply human milk to high risk infants who, for some reason or the other, cannot be directly breast fed. The best way to collect milk for the bank is by manual expression into a clean container. It is less likely to be contaminated than that collected by… [ Continue Reading ]
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