Apple Puree

Ingredients:

                                                  Any amount of apples you desire.

Instructions:

Step 1. Peel, core and cut apple into slices/chunks 

            
Step 2. Place slices or chunks into a bowl.

Step 3. Boil/steam until tender; be sure to check on the water level.

Step 4: Once the apples are cooked. Peel the skin off and fork mash it until you get the right consistency.

Step 5: Store the apple puree into Baby Cubes.

Rice Cereal As Baby First Food

When solid foods are introduced around 6 months. Infant rice cereal is generally given as baby first food. It is because:

• Free of gluten.

• Easily thinned to a texture not much thicker than milk, so is very easily digested by most infants and unlikely to cause any upsets for a infant.

• Low in fibre compared with adult cereal. A baby's dedicate gut does not require harsh cereal fibre and fibre is very bulky and can "fill up" your baby so that he doesn't have room for all the other food. Fibre also interferes with the absorption of some important nutrients.

• Unlikely to trigger an allergic reaction 

p/s: Read more on http://www.homemade-baby-food-recipes.com/best-first-food-for-baby.html

Source : Breast Bottle Bowl
               What to Expect The  First Year

Declan's First Food

D had his first food on 4th July 2010 about 8:30am. So i let him start out with this organic brown rice cereal.

I bought this Happy Bellies organic brown rice cereal from a local organic shop nearby.

Instructions:

Step 1: Pour desired amount of cereal into bowl

            
Step 2: Add liquid of choice ( breast milk, formula or water all work fine ).

Step 3: Mix until it's the right thickness for baby.

Step 4: Feed your baby right away. Throw away any leftovers.

p/s: For baby's first feeding, use 4 tbsps of liquid for every 1 tbsp of dry cereal. Increase portion as baby grows.

Guess what??? He loves it so much.....

                                                                     Before

                                                                     After

Salt? Sugar?

Should we add in additional salt or sugar when we prepare our baby's food???  The answer is "NO"

Babies are born with four times more taste buds then we have as adults (did you know... a baby is born with about 12000 taste buds? By the time we get to middle age, we have only 3000), so foods are very tasty to them and you shouldn't prepare your baby's food to suit your taste. Baby hasn't acquired a taste for salt and sugar, so don't add it.

In fact, their kidneys can't handle large amounts of sodium (salt), which is probably why Mother Nature made breast milk a very low-sodium drink (with only 5 miligrams of sodium per 250ml as compared to 120 milligrams per 250mls of cow's milk). And there is some evidence that too much salt too soon, especially when there is a family history of hypertension, can set the stage for high blood pressure in adulthood. A high-sodium diet early in life can also nurture a lifelong taste for the salty stuff.

source: Breast Bottle Bowl by Anne Hillis & Penelope Stone

                What to Expect The  First Year by Heidi Murkoff, Arlene Eisenberg & 

                Sandee Hathaway

HEALTHY PARENTS HEALTHY BABY

I always believe that healthy parents have healthy baby so it's unrealistic to expect our kids to develop good eating habits if we don't have them ourselves.

The foundations of good health are laid in the first years of life. It is in these years that you establish healthy eating patterns and help set you baby on the path to a life free of illness like heart disease, high blood pressure, certain cancers, stroke and diabetes. While these illnesses rarely strike before midlife, the processes that cause these "lifestyle" diseases' actually begin in childhood.

Nowaday, many children are overweight or obese, are showing early signs of Type 2 diabetes, have high blood cholesterol readings, are unfit and don't fo enough regular exercise.

As any parent knows there are no schools where you can qualify as a parent before  you become one. So what we can do is learn it from our baby, our baby will guide us thoroughout the parenthood.