From the moment a baby is born, its parents care for its proper development, immunity, and physical and mental well-being. Parents should be aware of how much depends on them and their daily choices. Here are seven tips to ensure your baby is growing healthy.
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1. Add Grains, Fruit, Vegetables, and Legumes to Baby’s Diet
Due to the immature digestive system and weaker digestive functions than in adults, the baby’s diet must be adapted to its age and needs. First of all, meals should be easy to eat and digest. Parents should prefer mainly warm, cooked, easily digestible meals, rich in nutrients. It is worth including groats, rice, quinoa, vegetables (mainly root vegetables but also pumpkin, fennel, and sweet potatoes), oatmeal, eggs, fish, and delicate meat.
When it comes to fruit, it is better to use nature’s native gifts and give your baby apples, pears, blueberries, or raspberries. It is also a good idea to cook or bake fruit and serve it with millet, porridge, or natural yogurt as a kind of dessert. Supplement them with high-quality dried fruit such as dates, figs, raisins, and apricots.
The baby’s digestive system will benefit from adding mild spices that improve digestion, such as marjoram, dill, anise, oregano, and vanilla. Spices will not only affect health positively but also allow the child to discover new tastes.
If you have a newborn or infant and cannot or do not want to breastfeed it for some reason, make sure to feed it with the best organic European baby formula of the highest quality.
2. Ensure a Healthy and Enough Sleep
The length and quality of sleep are critical for the baby’s proper growth and development. Infants and small children require more sleep. It should be not only long but also calm. Do not put the baby to sleep in a room with a TV or computer turned on. The active electromagnetic field makes it difficult to fall asleep and worsens the quality of sleep. The screen light reaches the retina even with the eyes closed and disturbs the rhythm of sleep and wakefulness.
3. Ensure Daily Physical Activity
A healthy kid is usually active and full of energy, so he is continuously looking for activity and fun. By the way, daily exercise contributes to bone mineralization.
However, extra forms of physical and intellectual activity may become a burden for your child. A weekly schedule including football training, dance classes, judo, painting classes, or other similar activities will not necessarily positively affect his development.
A kid’s quickly developing body requires a lot of energy for growth. So it has to properly regenerate its strength. Excessive frequent physical activity can adversely affect health and weaken the work of internal organs. So do not push your kid too much, expecting it to make it stronger, smarter, and healthier.
4. Take Care of Your Kid’s Mental Health
When it comes to developing various abilities, follow your child’s natural choice. If your kid has a talent and willingness to play piano, he will ask for classes, and if you force him to do so, it might discourage him from music. Do not adjust the child’s needs to your ambitions. Instead, reasonably consider the real possibilities and do not plan too many activities for your kid.
5. Ensure Contact with Nature
Raising a child naturally includes direct contact with nature and animals. Sterile conditions may lead to impaired immunity and an inability to communicate with the surrounding world. So let your baby crawl freely, even outdoors, without rubbing its hands with disinfectant wipes. It is also great to have a pet at home because children raised with a cat or a dog learn to communicate with animals and develop empathy.
6. Consider Hardening, But with Care
The tempering method has been known for years. Hardening should start with walks outside, regardless of the weather conditions. The baby should be in the open air for at least 2 hours daily. This allows more oxygen to reach the cells. Therefore, the immune system produces more white blood cells to fight microbes. Secondly, outdoors, the child’s body learns to react to various pathogens, and also gets used to temperature changes. Additionally, breathing in the fresh air moisturizes the nasal mucosa, which is one of the barriers against the intrusion of microorganisms.
You should remember not to overheat the baby, which is quite common. During outdoor walks, the child’s body learns to adapt to temperature changes. When the kid is dressed too warm, its thermoregulation fails, the child sweats excessively, gets cold, and becomes ill more often.
7. Less Stress, More Happiness
Although it may seem that strong emotions or stress apply only to us adults, we must realize that the child also experiences them. The first weeks in the new kindergarten group are a real emotional challenge for a toddler, which may indirectly weaken its immune system and contribute to infection. Of course, this does not mean that parents should give up kindergartens, but it is worth making efforts to relieve the stress associated with it. Most nurseries and kindergartens offer “adaptation days” with the parent so that the child feels safe in the new place.
