why is it.....?

Question

the government reccomends something so everyone belives that it is "the thing to do." i have a 7 and a half month old daughter and i raised her and took care of her the way "I" felt was good. i tried my *ss off to breast feed until i completely dried up, i gave her the formula that i thought was best, i put cereal in her bottle at 2 months to help her sleep at night (trust me it works) i gave her a little taste of baby food at 3 almost 4 months and started actually giving her babyfood by 5 months. she now has 3 solid meals a day with maybe 10 ounces of formula a day. why does everyone listen to what the government reccomends? the government didnt reccomend nothin 50-60 years ago and people raised healthy babies back then. so what changed now? how the hell does the government know exactly what is best? are they inside of a babies body seeing exactly what does what at what age? no, they dont even give a damn... they just get payed to pretend to know everything.

so stop jumping all over the mother who choose to give their little 1 and 2 month old babies cereal to help them stay full better... stop yelling at us mothers who give out babies solids earlier then 6 months, and stop judging the mothers who choose to stop giving formula or breast milk to our babies before 12 months. your grandparents probably did it when they were raising your parents and they turned out fine didnt they? the government is not worried about your childrens health... they get paid to tell u what to do, isnt that obvious!!!

and for those of you who do go by what the govenment reccomneds i didnt mean to offend u. as long as your child is healthy then good for u!! im just saying it is far from nessecary to go by exactly what they say.

wow i feel sorry for the poor babies that they tested all this stuff on, u know since this is all "Proven" he only way to prove it is to test it out on babies and they all have the same outcome. poor baby.

Answer 1

It wasn't even as far back as 50-60 years ago. As recently as the 1970s, bottlefed babies had a homemade formula made of evaporated milk, water and karo syrup. Some mothers still fed that to their babies in the 1980s too. Today's commercial formulas are a lot healthier than that.

Waiting until 6 months to start solid foods is pretty recent too. In the 1990s it was 4 months old and the 1980s it was 3 months. In the 1970s, some newborns had a small about of rice cereal in their homemade formula bottles and they were eating jarred baby food at 4 WEEKS old. Amazing but true.

Ask your mother how you were fed as a baby. If you weren't breastfed then you may be shocked to hear what your diet was like. But it's Ok, you survived. ;)

Answer 2

An almost 8 month old only drinking about 10 ounces of formula a day is kinda scary. I believe that the recommendations are in place to ensure proper nutrition for babies. Provided that the meals a baby eats during the day include a variety of nutritious foods, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. The problem is that it is easy to not feed such small children all of the appropriate solids they need to get the nutrients they need. I think it is because of this that the government recommends that until 12 months of age primary nutrition should come from breast milk or formula.

Answer 3

It isn't always the government, it is groups of doctors who DO undertand the inner workings of a babies body. They don't decide these things arbitrarily but because they have studied the effects of on a baby of things such as having food too early before the body is ready. Things were recommended 50-60 years ago they were just different but there were not as many studies. Many of the things 50-60 years ago were either educated guesses or "old wives tales" that everyone believed. Some of it was true but much of it has changed, and it may change again as more studies are conducted in regards to things like allergies.
There are recommendations to help people figure out what to do. A lot of people would have NO idea what to do if doctors and health professionals were not vocal about their recommendations. But they are only recommendations, not requirements and many people choose to ignore them. I wonder why you are so bitter? Have you had problems with the government? Or have people criticized you? It isn't really anyone's business how you are feeding your children unless you not feeding them at all so don't worry about what other people say.

Answer 4

If that is your choice, fine... some of us like to listen to what our doctors tell us. They didn't just pull this information out of their rear. Have you been through medical school? Do you truly understand the inner workings of the human body? If you choose to go "against the grain" for the heck of it, don't get mad when people advise you otherwise.

By the way... the government and doctors recommend not co-sleeping and SO many people do it. They recommend not giving cereal until 6 months, but some people give it at 4 months. They recommend breastfeeding, but a lot of people formula feed. It is quite evident that people have made up their minds what they want to do. It is one thing to take a recommendation and adjust it to your lifestyle... For example, your doctor says, "no cereal until 6 months" and you start at 5 1/2. Big deal? Probably not... Starting at one month, in their bottle (big choking hazard by the way)... probably not the best idea.

Answer 5

As others have said, I do listen when a doctor says something may harm my baby. I also research it myself before making an informed decision.
Doctors know that formula isn't as healthy as breast milk and that feeding rice cereal (which is really unnecessary at any age, as it has little nutritional value) can cause digestive issues because they compare children whose parents chose these things over breastfeeding and waiting to introduce solids. It's as simple as that.
Furthermore, the government doesn't recommend these things. If they did, I highly doubt they would give out free formula via WIC and other support services. It's the doctors who make such recommendations.

Answer 6

It called science. People do research to make things better. They also didn't realize smoking was bad either. They didn't have cereal thousands of years ago or bottles for that matter. It is about making sure your baby is growing properly. I don't do everything "the government", as you call it, recommends, but some things are just common sense.

By the way, have you seen America lately, fat fat fat. It all starts when they learn to eat and putting cereal in bottles makes them loose the sense of how much they are eating and leads to overweight. Yes, true that many people are not, but it is not on an individual basis, it is on an international level. If your baby turns out ok, good for you, but science wants to make people live longer and healthier. Maybe you should take your rant to the "governement" or something.

Answer 7

because doing the things that you did can later cause health problems. jsut because it didnt at the moment doesnt mean your child wont get diabetes, food allergies. since people started putting cereal in bottels the food allerigies percentage has highly increased andd the amount of obese people- 50-60 years ago people were mch dumer- but your risking your child's health not mine
they didnt have studies back then thats showed what they can see now and they certainly didnt have the equipment- i cna already tell you're uneducated- do you honestly think that babies were suppose to be fed food that early if the were then we would dry up around that time and we wouldnt have breasts- thats selfish that you wouldd risk your child's health just to get more sleep. a child can live off of JUST breastmilk for over the first year of life so what make you think she needs solid foods- your five month old eats more solids than my 8 1/2 month old. do you think babies weere meant to have cow's breastmilk-no adult humans aren't even designed for it.
your baby should be getting way more formula than that! food before 1 yr is just for practice and they need the extra calories and milk fat for brain growth. my son is 8 1/2 months andd is getting more than double the amount of breastmilk than your 7 1/2 month old

Answer 8

i go by what science and studies have proven to be true.

young babies are intolerable to cereal and such at a young age. Their digestive tracts cannot handle it.. that has been proven.

following the guidelines of what the "government" (which umm its not the government its our doctors.. you know the ones who are paid to do whats best for our children) as you keep calling it is recommending is not set in stone.. its a recommendation and because of those recommendations babies are healthier and safer.

SIDS is a perfect example... go ahead and don't follow the guidelines and when your baby dies of SIDS its at your OWN FAULT.

Did I follow all of the recommendations with my 9 month old? No.. but I sure did find out why they had those recommendations and before I acted on it I knew what the consequences were.

Answer 9

The government doesn't recommend these things. A doctor recommends things to help keep people safe. you say not to blast people yet you're blasting people that follows what doctors recommends.

You say people 60 years ago did this or that and it didn't hurt anyone..how do you know? were you there? My mother fed me honey when I was a baby. Put it on a pacifier. We now know that isn't safe. I also slept on my stomach. I'm alive and kickin' but would I do those things for my baby? You better believe I wouldn't. Do what you will with your child but practice what you preach and don't try to blast all of us who are trying to do what we feel is best for our babies

Answer 10

I think you have trouble understanding how to identify research when you see it, and that you have trouble interpreting research.

There's some idea out there that it's fine for mothers to be ill-educated -- why bother going to university if you're just going to stay home and raise children, etcetera -- and I think that's a real shame. I urge you to continue your education when your baby is a bit older.

Re. "so stop jumping all over the mother who choose to give their little 1 and 2 month old babies cereal to help them stay full better..." -- no. Those are lazy, lousy mothers and I loathe having to be a member of a group that includes such slobs.

Giving an infant junk food to try to get a little more sleep for yourself is just pitiful. It is the worst, laziest kind of mothering, and it deserves public condemnation.

As for that "oh, everybody did it back in the day" -- how do you think they found out that it had negative effects?

And, not everybody did stupid things. The popular recommendation when I was a baby was to start pap at three months. When did my mother start me on a little banana? At "five or six months, when YOU were clearly interested and ready for it." There is mother wisdom out there that should be paid attention to, sometimes even over and above "governments." But if my mother had been a disinterested, detached, lazy mom who crammed starch into me rather than just nursing me back to sleep -- different story. Bad mothering back when is still bad mothering today.

It should come as no suprise to anybody that bad choices in infant nutrition are associated with bad choices in maternal education, too. The less education a mother has, the more likely she is to use formula and introduce solids too early (formula-feeding in itself is associated with too-early solids, too, something that plays out daily here on Yahoo! Answers...)

See:
"Attitudes and practices regarding the introduction of solid foods to infants"

http://fampra.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/19/6/698

I can't slag off anybody going on Grandma's advice because that's all they have, but I sure can slag off somebody who has access to no end of research on infant nutrition, and STILL insists on making a poor choice...