Baby is a special group which needs to be taken good care of by parents, even drinking water is a matter of unexceptional.
Water is a kind of macro-nutrients. It is only next to oxygen on maintaining life, and more important than food. Human can live without eating food for several weeks or even months, but without water, people will die within a few days. In addition to convey nutrition and waste between organs in the body, water also ①participates in the whole process of metabolism; ②regulate body temperature; ③maintains blood volume; ④maintains normal secretion of the gland and other physiological functions. Because water accounts for 70%-80% of baby’s weight, and 60% of adult’s weight, therefore, comparing with adult, the water demand of infants and young children is more important. Usually we need to pay special attention to infants and young children when supply water to them (mainly on drinking water).
Following are a few tissues we may discuss on how to feed baby and young children with water.
Infants and young children cannot tell when they are thirsty. Therefore it entirely depends on mother or other babysitters to observe that if baby is lapping up his lips with tongue constantly, or if baby’s mouth and tips are dry, or there is no urine on the diaper when it is the time to change diaper, etc. All these signs show that baby needs to drink water.
The boiled water without sweet taste is preferable. Because if baby gets used to drink sweet water (beverage), gradually he doesn’t like to be breast-fed. It is detrimental for baby growth and development. In particular, do not give beverages which contain artificial additive to baby, because the artificial additive will stimulate the gastrointestinal tract of baby. Slightly it will cause discomfort and hinder digestion, and severely it will cause spasm.
Besides the above-mentioned performances indicate the demand of drinking water, we usually give baby water to drink in the intermission between two times of breast-feeding. In addition, long time staying outside, after taking a bath, after waking up, or before going to bed at night, baby needs to be fed water. But don’t give baby water before breast-feeding, so as not to impact breast-feeding.
As there are much factors that will affect the water demand of human body, such as age, room temperature, humidity, active degree, body temperature, water content in milk or food. Generally speaking, in the neonatal period, due to much times of breast-feeding, if the mother’s milk is sufficient, feed your baby with water one or two times a day is enough. With the increasing of baby’s age, feeding times and the volume of water-per-feeding should be increased. However, in practice, how much water baby may drink depends on baby’s own will. That is to say, if he doesn’t like to drink, forget it. This shows that there is enough water in baby’s body.
Under normal circumstance, baby under 3-year-old should drink water no more than 100 milliliter per time, while baby over 3-year-old may increase the volume of water he drinks to 150 milliliter per time. As long as the urine is normal, children can drink small volume water each time but many times a day according to the actual situation. Increase the times of drinking water when sweating, rather than increases the volume of water each time. For baby under 4 months with breast-feeding, you do not need to feed it water if there is no obvious sweating. Because feeding water will reduce the volume of drinking milk, which is not good for baby absorbing nutrition.
Due to the infant’s digestive tract mucosa is rather tender, it could not stand stimulation of too cold or too hot water. If you feed baby with the water taken out from refrigerator in summer, your baby will feel uncomfortable and even convulsion; overheated water might burn your baby. Therefore, in summer, baby should drink the water of room temperature and in winter the water temperature should be controlled around 40°C.
After research, drinking the water which is boiled and then cooled to room temperature is best for health. The water which is boiled and then cooled contains half less gas than the water not boiled, therefore increase the cohesion between water molecules. Such water is much closed to the characteristic of water which contained in human cells and it has the good affinity with human cells. So cooled boiled water is most easily to be absorbed by human body and permeate the cell membrane. It will help metabolism, increase hemoglobin and enhance body immune function. After scientists’ observation, the human who often drinks the cooled boiled-water, the activity of dehydrogenase in 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 to 6 hours is the optimal water to drink. Cooled boiled water will be contaminated by bacteria when reserved long time and dump repeatedly. So don’t boil too much water each time. Do not boil the cold water repeatedly, otherwise, heavy metal in the water will be concentrated and harm human health. It is better to drink cooled boiled water of the same temperature with room temperature in summer. And in winter baby should drink warmer water, because cold water will do harm to his tender digestive tract mucosa and impact the ability of digest, causing bellyache, inappetency and even gastritis.