A Mother

Management Tip

Ensuring the right balance of nutrients and sleep is important for growing babies. Adequate sleep allows a baby to be more receptive of food and feeding, which in turn enables better digestion.

There are significant changes and adaptations in a baby’s life between 4 - 9 months. Their diet changes from liquid to solid and from being fed to feeding themselves.

Up until 4 months a breast fed baby usually feeds every 3 hours during the day and sleeps for about 1 – 1 ½ hours in between and may wake for a feed once during the night. If this pattern continues after they are 4 months old, they are often not getting enough time to fit in a couple of longer sleeps during the day and 10-11 hours unbroken sleep at night. Having a longer sleep pattern is better suited to their gross motor and psychological development.

Some babies at this age will tend to ‘catnap’ or ‘powernap’ during the day and begin to wake more often at night. Parents may begin feeding their babies again at night, thinking they are hungry. This can create challenges when they are 6 months old, because some babies are not hungry enough to be really interested in eating as their additional nutritional requirements have been met by these night feeds. During this period of growth, without adequate sleep and nutrition they can be tired and often fussy during feeds. Their weight gain can also be slow.

Product Tip

My Story

I have noticed a big difference in his mood if I cut out milo and dairy. He is very settled since I cut them out. And if I have a day where i have sugar i notice the difference!.

Parenting Tip

Feeding recommendations for infants born before 37 weeks gestation should be based on their birth weight, discharge weight, nutritional status and developmental status and advancing through the normal progression using the baby’s corrected age. This includes:

●No solids until after 17 weeks corrected age

●Offer small amounts of sloppy pureed foods mixed with water, breast or formula milk

●Offer a new food every 3-4 days to allow for sensitivities to be noted and the digestive system to accommodate

●Ensure meat is commenced by six months

●Ensure a happy and relaxed environment


Developmentally an infant is ready to eat when:

●Good head control is achieved

●Mouth opens readily when presented with food from a spoon

●Absence of tongue thrust allowing for food to stay in the mouth and to be easily swallowed

A small window of opportunity exists between 4-6 months corrected age, for the introduction of solid foods.

It is important to start solid foods as early as possible at this acceptable time to allow for appropriate jaw and muscle development which is a precursor to speech and language skills and intellectual stimulation.

Tiny and controlled introduction of allergy risk foods when the immune system is developing is proving to now limit allergies.

Prematurely born babies may have feeding difficulties to a varying severity however, it is important to maintain optimum growth and development of a prematurely born infant and early intervention of suitable nutrition is recommended.

This is in the form of

•Infant formula if breast milk is not adequate with nutrients due to mothers diet
•Early introduction of solids, calculated midway between 16 weeks post birth and 16 weeks post due date
•Give iron, zinc and Vitamin C rich foods to give high energy and protein content.
These include avocado, stewed pear, apricots, paw paw, sweet potato, pumpkin, pate, parsley, cooked lean red meat, chicken, egg and broccoli

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