Continuing on with my thoughts on feeding small children – I decided to mention a little more to cover babies and these first years of life. This is far more significant and important then most people realize and is one of the main areas detoxed when doing a deep cleanse.
I have seen several times in my own experience with Master Cleanses, how embedded toxins such as early antibiotics and vaccines affect not only gut development, but also cognitive and thought processes.
Poor food choices, for both the infant and the mother during pregnancy and breastfeeding, have a profound affect on these early days of life too. Nutritionists, such as myself have been warning about this for years and only now are these early stages being considered.
A young infant has an immature gut, a developing nervous system, poor eyesight, is completely dependent on others for everything and must have the right kind of food in order to grow properly. We haven’t even brought in the emotional aspects of this food being offered, but that is a huge component too.
What you eat during pregnancy and breastfeeding directly affects you and your child – perhaps for the rest of his life. And maybe your life too. If you are taking in non-nutrients such as sugar, caffeine, alcohol and rubbish foods, you are doing several detrimental things.
One to yourself – when you fill up on empty calories your body cannot nourish a growing fetus adequately and once the baby is born, breast milk will be a poorer quality shortchanging both your child and yourself. Even over the short term, your body requires a lot of nourishment to pass on adequate nutrition to maintain an infant as well as to encourage normal growth.
This sets both mother and child up in a nutritional deficit situation right from the very beginning of life. Not the best way to start off living on this planet – certainly when it can be avoided so easily.
Secondly, poor nutritional status places your child at risk for all sorts of gut issues and perhaps far more. Studies are linking back these early days to not only allergies and digestive problems but poor immune function and perhaps longer term conditions such as obesity and diabetes. As an intuitive, I think it goes far deeper than this…
In general there are further issues here when it comes to feeding young children, I have learned a few along the way (trial and error and the hard way of course!). I have listed some pointers and things to watch out for;
Babies do not ‘need’ solid food (they need breastmilk for the first 2 years), everything else is secondary
Babies do not need a wide range of foods
Infants will play with food, do not push them to ‘eat’
They will eat when they are ready and everyone is different
Start babies off on vegetables, not fruit or cereal (make your own)
A breast fed baby will not overeat, but anyone can be ‘overfed’
Babies need breast milk – not cows milk, they are not baby cows. We are the only species who feeds our young using milk from a completely different animal – and stupidly expects them to develop and grow without any problems.
Cows milk is not designed for humans – that is why so much processing (there is that nasty word again) must take place in order to feed it to a tiny baby. Breastfed babies will grow and develop at their own pace, in a far more natural way then formula fed infants.
If you are planning on having children – take your time, prepare your body, exercise, nourish yourself and then eat an adequate diet throughout. This does not mean that you require extra food either – just nutrient dense foods. If you have a small child, start today with organic vegetables, grains and fruits.
Plan to breast feed your child and start with changing your diet – it’s the only way to do what you can to ensure a proper diet and healthy future, for both of you.
April
 |
| Blue Moon Ceremony |
No comments:
Post a Comment