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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How much to feed your baby: 8 months and over
By now your baby is probably enjoying a varied diet. As they get better at holding things start giving them finger foods. Breast milk or formula is still an important part of their nutrition but it is important that at this stage you offer food before their usual milk feeds. This means that your baby will begin to get more of their nutrition from food than in the earlier stages.
As far as appetite goes your baby will be good at guiding you. Babies and toddlers have a better sense of when they’re full or hungry than adults do. It’ll be a matter of you learning how they communicate so you can tell when they’ve had enough.
A few ways they might tell you they’re full:
- Waterworks kick in – tears, crying and shouting when you try to feed them
- Flat out refusal - refusing to swallow, spitting food out, pushing their bowl away, refusing to open their mouth or turning or shaking their head.
- General unhappiness – noises, faces and gestures that tell you ‘no’.