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On demand

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You wake up, get dressed, brush your teeth, fix your hair, and eat breakfast. Or maybe you don't. Maybe this morning you don't feel like eating as much as usual because you feel different, not hungry, or are too tired. You don't have a lunch break until noon. But you can't wait that long to eat, so you grab a snack in between breakfast and lunch. Or maybe you decide to eat lunch earlier than usual. It is nice to have that luxury, isn't it?

For schedule fed babies, they don't get that luxury. If they don't eat as much as usual at their first feeding for any reason, they may get hungry before their scheduled second feeding. Unfortunately for these babies, their parents won't feed them until the clock says it's time. No amount of crying to communicate their hunger will prevail, it is only the clock that matters. To me, this is a form of child starvation.

I always fed my son on demand. Some may view this as lazy, or think this means I stuck a bottle in his mouth every time he cried, but that is far from the truth. I just refused to starve him. Especially during growth spurts, children will eat up to twice the normal amount of times as usual. So, for schedule fed babies, this means that during growth spurts, they may get half the nutrition that they actually need. That's why I am a firm believer in feeding on demand. Your child will tell you when he is hungry. There is no need to schedule it.

My son, in spite of being fed on demand, didn't gain weight any faster than his peers. As a matter of fact, he was always skinny compared to others. That's because being fed on demand doesn't mean feeding your infant just because he is crying. It simply means feeding him when he is hungry. If a parent learns to decipher bored crying with discomfort crying with hunger crying, it's quite easy to know exactly what your baby is requesting of you. If it is hunger, by all means, feed your child. Babies are unaware that it is not yet "time" to feed them, all they know is that they are hungry. It is also proven that babies whose parents attend to their needs in a timely manner are much more trusting that they will be taken care of. Therefore, it stands to reason that, if a baby is signaling hunger and the parent will not feed them simply because it's not time yet, the baby will be distrustful that they will be taken care of in other areas of need.

Feeding on demand is the only way to feed an infant, one who has no sense of time and only a sense of dependency on their parent to provide for them and take care of their needs. Hunger is a need, and they need us, their parents, to provide the food for them. Withholding a feeding due to scheduling, in my opinion, is starvation.

Learn more about this author, Elizabeth Kelley.
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