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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Too little for a toothbrush: caring for baby teeth
You need to start caring for your baby’s teeth as soon as they arrive. While you can buy baby toothbrushes it’s not vital. When they’re really tiny you can wipe them with a clean soft cloth, or even clean them with a smudge of toothpaste on your finger. The main thing is to get your baby used to the routine twice a day.
As they start getting a older with more teeth it’ll be time for a toothbrush and some proper supervised brushing.
Preventing decay: maintaining your baby’s smile
No one is safe from decay. It can affect all of us, even your baby’s teeth. Some of us are more prone to tooth decay than others; it’s a mix of how well you take care of your teeth and genetics. Here are a few ways to keep baby’s teeth in tiptop shape.
Sleeping with their mouth full - avoid letting your baby sleep while attached to your breast for any long stretch of time. The same goes for really frequent breastfeeds during the day (even breast milk can decay teeth if it is given too frequently).
What’s in the bottle - only put infant formula or water in a bottle, not juice or other sweetened drinks.
Just hanging out - try not to leave your baby propped up with a bottle in his or her mouth for a long time, and encourage them to drink from a cup as soon as possible. They can usually do this by the time they’re one.
Sweets and treats - babies don’t need these before at least one year of age. After that it’s best to keep sweet foods for the end of meals, and between meals offer raw fruit, sandwiches, crackers, rather than dried fruit and sweet biscuits.