baby food trends

Of course, I am a Granny, so my experience is different than yours today. That is why I named this post "trends".

First of all, I was breast fed but when I had children, I was never, no not once, encouraged to breast feed. The new formulas were found to be very satisfactory, according to the pediatricians, it was just a matter of preference. (Remember the thing about the first graders, can't pick out which were breast fed). But, my grandchildren were all breast fed. One mother even pumped her breasts for 7 months so that her child could get his best start when he wasn't able to nurse. Others have been very upset when they couldn't nurse as long as they would have liked. I know, there are antibodies in breast milk, but, I think that mothers suffer a lot unnecessarily over breast feeding vs formula feeding. One advantage for bottle feeding is that mother won't be as tired because others can feed the baby and I think that they must take more from a bottle at a time than with nursing. This isn't an argument for one or the other, just that there are trends and I have seen mothers suffer because of the current trend. There is also the issue of the solid food. My third child was 9lb 14 oz and we stayed in the hospital for a week at that time. Before I went home, the pediatrician stood in my room and said, "Get him on solid food as soon as you can, go through the cereals, fruits and vegetables and get him on meat as soon as you can. He will wear you out trying to feed him all of the formula that he will need." When I acted surprised, he said, "Do the math, he needs x # of calories for every pound he weighs." Now he is a tall slim runner and I think, very healthy. In some cultures, I have read that they scrape meat and feed it to babies. Who knows, it does change from generation to generation. It will probably be different when you have grandchildren. The thing to do then is what they see is "right" at the time. Children are amazingly adaptable and resilient. All of this is said so that you new mothers will relax and enjoy and nurture this baby. That is what they need most of all and that doesn't change.