Breast is best
Breast milk is the best milk for babies. Breast milk provides the ideal balanced nutrition and protection for your baby. Maternal nutritional requirements increase during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Therefore mothers’ diets should include a wide variety of nutritious food and healthy snacks.
If you are considering bottle feeding, always seek professional advice as once bottle feeding has commenced it can be difficult to revert to breast feeding. Partial bottle feeding may also adversely affect breastfeeding by reducing the supply of breast milk. Always use and prepare infant formula as directed by the manufacturer; unnecessary or improper use of infant formula can be hazardous to the health of your baby.
Before using infant formula, always consider the social and financial implications, such as issues of convenience and cost to the household of using infant formula for at least 12 months. If you are considering using infant formula, it is important to discuss this with a health professional.
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Learning to swallow: the Extrusion Reflex
Your baby is born with a sucking reflex, and when it comes to feeding this is what they’ll use for their first few months of life.
The other reflex your baby has is an extrusion reflex. This is when they'll push any food placed on their tongue out the front of their mouth.
This is completely normal, and doesn't mean they don't like their food - it just means they're not capable of swallowing it yet. Somewhere between four and six months the extrusion reflex should disappear, and it's from this point that you can look at giving your baby new types of food.