juice for baby???

I've been mixing the baby juice with 50% water and I was giving her at least a cup of it a day. Today I gave her an extra cup of milk instead. I thought giving her a little variety would be good for her but I guess I should think juice as a treat.

 

I understand that the puree thing would be better. I always thought juice was healthy for you until I checked the labels on juices(even the ones that said 100% pure juice) and I couldn't find any that didn't say from concentrate accept some apple juices.

 

I tried giving her water in a sippy cup about a month or so ago and she wouldn't drink it so that's why I started using baby juice. I just recently stopped breastfeeding cause i'm going back to work and she's now starting to eat finger foods as well.

 

What you could do is keep giving her the juice/water mix, but every day water it down a bit more until she learns to drink just water.

 

yeah, that's a good idea, I think i'll try that.

 

Thanks for all the advice, it was helpful

 

It's not the Concentrate that is the problem. All that means is that at one time, the water was removed from the juice and then added back. THAT isn't what makes juice a less than good food for babies.

There just isn't anything in juice that a baby can't get from human milk (or formula, if you aren't breastfeeding) or real food. Juice is LOADED with calories, but has little FOOD VALUE. It fills babies up, and then they eat less of things which are good for them.

I think the doctor was warning you against "juice blends." Which are usually a litlte juice mixed with corn syrup and water (like High C, which is crap.) Unless your baby has severe allergies to certain yeasts, it doesn't matter if the juice is from concentrate or not, food value wise. (Although fresh juice TASTES better.) At 10 months a baby should still have human milk or formula as her main food, and fruits and veggies a litle at a time.

When my babies were this age, and wanted to sit at the table with the Big People. I would just put about an ounce or two of bottled water into a sippy cup, and they would play with that. My kids never had juice until well after a year. My 6 year old's Pediatrician even said a child HER age should have no more than 4 oz a day, and she's in 1st grade.

 

There have been problems with those mesh baby "Safe Feeders." Bacterial and Fungal contaimination, they are basically impossible to clean properly. Some babies have reallly gotten sick from eating food pushed through those, and the bacteria can''t be seen.

I give my babies SOFT things in small pieces to eat at this age. They can eat bigger things as they grow. I really don't like those mesh things at all. They just aren't cleanable. I was at a client's house once, and she pulled one out of a drawer, it hadn't been used by her toddler in a week or so, and it was coverd in this furry black mold, and she swore she cleaned it according to the package directions, every time he used it. Fungus can be there even if you can't see it. That mold most likely didn't get there from the drawer, but it had been given time to be seen. Blech. Just give the baby small enough pieces to chew. If they can't chew, they are too young for solids.

 

Ewwh! I'd wondered how you cleaned those! Gross.
love,
mom

 

aw man, thats gross! we haven't had any problems like that yet, and have been using it for 3 months, but not very often at all. But I don't think we're going to anymore........blech! Usually Leane chews on food herself. she now knows how to chew, though, so we haven't needed it in the last while.

 

we had those mesh feeder things. They work great with ice chips in them when baby is teething. But they are impossible to clean (we don't have a dishwasher) and I kept replacing the top part every time we tried any sort of fruit in one.

 

That's what I figure--to ahve plenty of the tops to replace it with when needed, or run it in the dishwasher too, should help lots. Maybe if a dishwasher wasnt available, wonder if they could be boiled??

 

MIW, just cutting up and cooking fruits that your baby is able to manage on her own is a good alternative. Any food put into those things, (I don't think ice would count, as it usually has a negligable mold and bacterial count) can eventually lead to spores, which you can't see. Replacing the mesh every time you use it would be prohibitively expensive, and I wouldn't wash it in bleach, then put it in my baby's mouth. Bleh.

Real food, with real texture teaches babies how to eat. There is rarely any need for contraptions.