Babies are a special group who need to be taken good care of, even when they are drinking water.
Water is a kind of macro-nutrients. It is just inferior to oxygen on maintaining life and more important than food. Human can live without eating any food for several weeks and even several months, but without water, people will die within a few days. In addition to convey nutrition and excrete the waste between organs, water also participates in the whole process of metabolism, it adjusts temperature of human, maintains the capacity of blood and normal secretion of the gland and other physiological functions. Since water accounts for 70%-80% of the weight of baby, and 60% of the weight of adult, infants and young children demand for more water than adults do. Usually we need to pay special attention to infants and young children when supply water to them (drink water). Following we may discuss several questions about how to feed babies and young children with water.
1. What are the signs when little baby needs to drink water?
Baby cannot tell when he feels thirsty. Therefore mother and other childminders must observe carefully. Those signs that baby is lapping up his lips with tongue, or the lips and mouth of baby are dry, or there is no urine on the diaper when it is the time to change diaper show that your baby needs to drink water.
2. What kind of water is the healthiest?
The boiled water without sweet taste is preferred.
If baby gets used to drinking the water with sweet taste, such as beverage, gradually he would not like to be breast-fed. It is not good for baby growth and development. So do not give little baby beverage, especially those beverages which contain artificial additive, because the artificial additive will stimulate the stomach and intestinal tract of baby. Slightly it will cause discomfort and hamper assimilation function of baby stomach. What the worse is that it will cause convulsion.
3. When to drink water?
Besides the behavior of demanding water, we usually give baby water to drink during two times of breast-feeding, long time staying outdoor, after taking a bath, after he wakes up, before go to sleep in the evening. But don't give him the water before breast-feeding, in order to avoid the effect of breast-feeding.
4. How much water a day is suitable?
There are much factors which will affect the demand of the water for human body, such as age, room temperature, humidity, active degree, animal heat, milk and the water contained on the food. Generally speaking, in the neonatal period, due to much times of breast-feeding, if the breast milk is sufficient, 1-2 times of feeding is enough. With the growing of baby, times of feeding water and the capacity of water should increase. But in fact how much water baby may drinks, it depends on the own will of baby. That is to say, if he doesn't like to drink when feeding him water, just let it be. That means there is enough water on baby body.
Under normal circumstance, do not give water to a baby of 3-year-old over 100 milliliter. When baby is above 3 years old, you may increase the volume of water to 150 milliliter. As long as the urine is normal, children can drink water with a little and several times according to the actual situation. You may increase times of drinking water if baby perspires a lot, but do not increase the volume of water each time. The babies under 4 months with exclusive breast-feeding can drink no water if there is no sweatiness. Because feeding them water will decrease the volume of milk they drink and it is not good for absorbing nutrition.
5. What is the suitable temperature of water for baby to drink?
Due to the tender gastrointestinal mucosa of baby and young children, they could not undergo with the stimulation of super-cooling or superheated water. If you feed baby with the ice water in summer, your baby will feel uncomfortable and even convulsion. The superheated water will scald your baby. Therefore, in summer, baby should drink the water with room temperature and in winter the temperature of water should be about 40 degree centigrade.
After research, drinking the water which is boiled and then cooled to room temperature is good for health. The water which is boiled and cooled contains half less gas than the water which is not boiled, and the cohesion between water molecules is increased. Such water is much closed to the characteristic of water which contained in the cells of human body and it has the good affinity with the cell of human body. So cool boiled water is easily absorbed by human body and permeates the cell membrane. It is propitious to metabolism, increasing hemoglobin and enhancing immune function. After scientists' observation, the human who often drinks the cooled boiled-water, the activity of dehydrogenated enzyme oh his body is high and is not easy to feel tired.
It should be noted that the gas will back to water again when cooled boiled-water exposed in the air. Therefore, the water which is boiled and cooled for 4-6 hours is the optimal drinking water. Cooled boiled-water will be polluted by bacteria when reserved long time and dump repeatedly. So don't boil too much water each time. Do not boil the cooled boiled-water repeatedly, otherwise, heavy metal on the water will be concentrated and harm human health. It is better to drink the cooled boiled-water of same temperature with room temperature in summer. And in winter you should drink warmer boiled-water, because cool water will do harm to the tender gastrointestinal mucosa of baby and affect its assimilation function, moreover, it will cause bellyache, inappetence and even gastricism.
