There are lots of bonding opportunities for you and your baby. One of the best bonding times, however, is when you are feeding your baby. This bonding occurs frequently – every time the baby is hungry. There is a right way and a wrong way to feed a baby, however, and you need a simple guide to feeding babies.
Bottle Feeding and Breastfeeding Babies
Whether you are bottle feeding or breastfeeding, you should hold your baby upright to feed him or her. Do not lay a baby down to feed them, or they can easily choke. This is also bad for their digestion.
Additionally, if bottle feeding, you should never prop up the bottle. Hold it yourself, and hold the baby as well. Feeding your baby is not a chore. It is a bonding experience that requires your undivided attention – not only for bonding purposes, but for safety as well. Do not squeeze the bottle in an attempt to make the baby drink the bottle faster. Let him or her drink the bottle at his or her own pace.
Feeding with a Feeder
When you introduce rice cereal to your baby’s diet, you will most likely use a feeder for this purpose. A feeder looks much like a bottle, but it is shorter and has a plate mechanism on the bottom that moves up as the baby sucks. The hole in the nipple is slightly larger as well.
Just as the baby is held in an upright position when drinking a bottle, he or she should be held upright when being fed with a feeder. Go slow – especially if this is new for the baby – and don’t be surprised if he or she spits the rice cereal out at first. This is a new taste for your little one. Infant baby foods can also be fed to the baby using a feeder. This is especially important for those that do not yet know what to do when a spoon is in their mouth – they only know how to suck at this point.
Feeding Baby with a Spoon
At some point, you need to do away with the feeder and start using a spoon to feed your baby. This gets a bit messier. Use a high chair and a bib – and wear an apron.
Do not load the spoon up with food. Instead, start by just putting a tiny bit of food on the tip of the spoon. Rub the spoon on the baby’s bottom lip, and he or she will most likely open the mouth. Put the spoon in and essentially scrap the food off of the spoon using the inside of the baby’s top lip. He or she may spit it out initially, but they will eventually swallow it. It won’t be long before he or she opens his or her mouth just like a baby bird waiting for the next bite. At that point, you can put a little more food on the spoon, but try to avoid filling the spoon more than halfway with food for each bite. Also, make sure that you are using a baby spoon, and not a regular spoon. Baby spoons are the right size, and they are coated with plastic so that they are softer in the baby’s mouth.
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