Food weight – babies, early years

Early years are a crucial period of development for children. The NHS Birth to Five Guide covers a wide range of topics, providing lots of important information and tools to help parents through the different stages of child development

It is important that children adopt positive eating and activity behaviours, because we know that behaviours set in childhood are carried into adulthood.

So, by ensuring babies, toddlers and young children eat a healthy balanced diet and are encouraged to take part in active play from birth, this helps establish a healthy lifestyle from an early age.

Breastfeeding is the most natural way to feed your baby and has many health benefits for mother and child.

A range of infant feeding groups operate across the city, allowing mums to seek professional advice and support from other mums around both breast and bottle feeding.

The breastfeeding network Portsmouth offers support groups and events – follow the link for their support group times and locations.

If you’re out and about for the day and your baby gets hungry just pop into any of the below locations:

The Portsmouth Supports Breastfeeding action group is a local partnership group that has developed a number of initiatives to support breastfeeding families across the city. Establishment of the peer supporter programme which links up experienced mums to provide direct support for new breastfeeding mums who need that little bit of extra support. The group:

• leads on the Unicef baby friendly accreditation within both midwifery (stage 2) and community (stage 1)
• piloted a breastfeeding welcome scheme with local cafes displaying stickers in Southsea

Download Unicef’s Start4Life leaflet below.

It is important families make an informed choice on the most suitable method of feeding their newborn and establish good eating habits for their children as they grow and develop. Follow the links for more information on:

• Breastfeeding
• Bottle feeding

Parents can get free vouchers every week to spend on milk, fresh/frozen fruit and vegetables and infant formula milk. You can also get free vitamins – for more information visit Healthy Start to see a map showing where in the city Healthy Start vitamins are available.

Once your baby has been introduced to solid foods, you should be encouraging and offering your child a wide range of foods to develop their taste buds. This will help reduce risk of fussy eating and help them start on the path of a healthy balanced diet.

However be careful not to provide too much sugary, fatty or salty foods. Not only does this develop a liking for them (even from a young age), but too much of these foods can seriously harm babies and young children. This is because their bodies aren’t developed and cannot cope with processing these foods.

The aim is to get toddlers into good habits and regular family meal patterns  from an early age, thus establishing good healthy eating behaviours which they can continue into childhood and beyond. Fussy eating is common amongst young children and nothing to worry about unless your child is not putting on weight or growing.

• Problems with eating NHS page

If you are worried about your child’s health because of their diet, please speak to your health visitor or GP.

Encouraging children and their parents to adopt a healthy diet and be active from an early age is vital for creating the foundations of a healthy, active lifestyle for the next generation.

The Healthy Pompey pre-school challenge sets the foundations for a healthy active lifestyle focusing on four key areas:

• Eat well – which covers healthy eating
• Move more – which promotes being active
• Growing grub – which teaches children about where food comes from
• Oral health – to ensure youngsters maintain healthy teeth

The challenge pack contains information, ideas and resources for pre-school staff to include key messages in their work and additional information for parents to continue the positive messages at home.

Over half of Portsmouth’s pre-schools have already signed up and over 25 had achieved accreditation giving their children the opportunity to learn about healthy eating and being active.

A food and health worker is on hand to provide specialist support to pre-school staff during the challenge and deliver healthy eating and being active training to staff and parents as required.

If you want to get involved, or need more information, phone Public Health Portsmouth on 023 9284 1714.