Healthiness, both in physics and mentality, is the biggest wealth parents can give to their child. It determines whether the child’s future will be poor, average, or optimal. It lays the foundation for the child’s education. Think about a student who always gets sick or is mentally retarded, his quality of studying will surely be compromised.
A healthy diet is one of the fastest ways a mother can provide to help building her child’s equipment for living. When I was pregnant, I followed the guidelines of healthy eating. Right now, I am following Heidi Murkoff’s nine principles of postpartum diet to maintain good nutrition for myself and to produce enough quality milk.
The nine basic diet principles for new mothers are: (from
What to Expect the First Year (Second Edition)
by Heidi Murkoff)
Principle 1: Make most bites count. Eat a wide variety of foods that help maintain abundant energy and ensure a plentiful supply of quality breast milk.
Principle 2: All calories are not created equal. Different foods, even they hold the same amount of calories, aren’t nutritionally equal.
Principle 3: Starve yourself, cheat your baby. A consistently irregular eating schedule can cut into mother’s own reserves and seriously reduce her milk supply.
Principle 4: Stay an efficiency expert. It is important to select foods dense in nutrition in relation to their calorie content.
Principle 5: Carbohydrates are a complex issue. Unrefined complex carbohydrates, such as whole grain breads, cereals, and cakes, brown rice, dried beans, peas, and other legumes which provide fiber and plenty of vitamins and minerals, are just the kind a new mother wants to concentrate on postpartum.
Principle 6: Sweet nothings are exactly that. Limiting the sugar intake helps trimming mother’s weight.
Principle 7: Eat foods that remember where they came from. Eat fresh foods rather than highly processed foods, which often contain excesses of saturated fat, sodium, and sugars, as well as artificial colors and other chemical additives.
Principle 8: Make good eating a family affair. Include the whole household in good eating and the baby will grow up in a home where good nutrition is natural.
Principle 9: Don’t sabotage your diet. Alcoholic beverage, tobacco or illegal drug use can definitely affect the baby adversely.
During month three, DD discovered her own hands as the most fascinating tools she could use. She began to pick up things with her fingers and tried to put them close to her mouth and licked them. She began to explore this world with her little cute mouth.
Week 9: DD could turn 90 degrees in her crib and plan pan. She got her feet and legs stuck between the bars of her crib and cried for help. It was a curious beginning for her. She stayed asleep for long stretches at night, normally 6 hours. She began to eat more frequently (approximately every 90 minutes) and stayed awake for longer stretches of play during the daytime. She smiled and cooed happily to the package of a coffee maker M bought few months ago.
Week 10: DD could flip completely by herself. She must find it fun because she kept rolling over onto her tummy as soon as I rolled her back. She tried to roll back by herself but failed. She felt frustrated.
Week 11: DD could lift her bottom up by pushing her legs. She did this when I changed diaper for her. She could lift her head and leveled it with her body when she was pulled to a sitting position. She was very happy to wake up early in the morning and refused to go back to sleep right after nursing. I left her play by herself for half an hour and then she returned to sleep. She began to pick up things nearby, like cloth towel or the corner of a blanket, took them close to her mouth and wanted to lick them.
Week 12: DD held my thumb with her little chubby hand. Later this week she held my index finger and drew it close to her mouth and wanted to lick it. She began to pick up other things and wanted to put them into her mouth. She squealed in delight when I showed her the Minnie Mouse picture book. She even tried to turn the page with her fingers!
Week 13: DD giggled loudly when I breathed air gently into her neck. She sighed deeply when she was left alone. Sometimes she turned her head away and sighed when I talked to her. She must be bored (is mummy this boring?!).
It is a common sense that parents are a child’s first teachers. They teach child the basic skills (walk, talk, self-control) and knowledge they need to survive in this world. But do you know parents are also child’s life-time teahers? The way parents treat their baby during the early stage of his life influces the child throughout his whole life.
In his paper Brain Child, Dr. Mark R. Pitzer, a post-doctoral neuroscientist of St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago, suggests that a child’s intellectual development is influenced equally by their inherited genetic blueprint and the early immediate environment.
While a child’s early environment, according to Dr. Pitzer, is largely controlled by its parents, through both direct interactions with the child and their decisions about the child’s surroundings. Therefore, parents play a critical role in their child’s intellectual growth.
In her book
What to Expect the First Year (Second Edition)
, Heidi Murkoff also points out that parents are the greatest influence during a child’s early age. The kind of a care a child receives during that time, no matter it is physical touch (touching, cuddling, or hugging) or communication (talking, singing, making eye contact, or cooing to the baby) or satisfying his/her basic needs (fed when hungry, changed when wet, held when frightened), determines to a large extent how successful, how content, how confident, and how competent to handle life’s challenges that child will be.
I never imaged being a parent can be this important. I am glad to find it out before I make any mistake.
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