If when you have a full-term baby it is difficult to find a consensus on what is the best time for a child to start eating foods other than milk, because some say that at six months and others at four, imagine the mess which can be if the baby is premature, which at six months is smaller with the age correction, having perhaps five, four or less months.
Many mothers are not sure about the best time for them to start eating, because it is not the same to talk about a six-month-old baby who was born at term than a six-month-old baby who was born, for example, two months before . The truth is that premature babies would have to start eating at six months of corrected age.
How is this corrected age?
The parents of premature children are quite clear about what this corrected age is, but ordinary people may not be so clear, so just in case I explain it. A baby is born at term when it has been gestating 37 or more weeks.
Every baby born before those weeks is considered premature and, consequently, age must be corrected so that when assessing maturation, weight, height and other factors, there are no surprises or unnecessary dislikes.
This correction is made based on 40 weeks (term baby is between 37 and 42 weeks). Thus, if a child is born, for example, at week 32, eight weeks before 40, two months of age should always be corrected: when he turns two months he will be a newborn and when he turns six months, he will actually be four months.
Starting to eat
Formerly, and since most children drank artificial milk and there was no recommendation to exclusively breastfeed until six months, most babies already took fruit juice with 3 months or began to try cereals. As today there is no such hurry because it has already been shown that The best thing a baby can drink for the first six months is milk, most babies do not start eating until then.
Imagine for a moment that the recommendations remained the same, with babies taking fruit and cereals at 3 or 4 months. A premature baby may already be eating with 1 or 2 months of corrected age, something unthinkable and not recommended at all. If a mother buys cereals from those who say "from four months" and gives her four-month-old premature baby, she may not even say them, since she will be smaller, and until that age, up to four real months, Babies have very little capacity to assimilate cereals.
Premature babies also need the best possible food.. They weigh little, have been born small, ahead of time and have to grow out what they have not grown inside. This means that what is best for them is to take breastmilk and do it the same as other babies, until they are six months old, but not since they are born, but six months of corrected age, to arrive on equal terms. Then, after six months, they start offering food just like the rest of the children.
But won't it make anemia?
One of the reasons babies start eating at six months is that of start giving them iron-rich foods, which is next to zinc that an exclusively breastfed baby can begin to miss.
It all depends on the moment when the baby's umbilical cord was cut. If you beat a little while, the two to three minutes that are recommended, you can have reservations until the year of life. If they cut it right away, the six months can mark that moment. Further, premature babies tend to have more risk of anemia than full-term babies and many have already scheduled an iron supplement from birth, precisely to prevent it.
All this to say that the way of acting will depend a lot on what the pediatrician of each baby indicates, although, as I say, the most advisable thing is to correct the age, start feeding them at six months, and if they fear for possible anemia continue with the scheduled iron, or start it until you eat iron-rich foods daily (meat and legumes, basically).
Not to give the fruit, cereals, vegetables and chicken before it will make the child more fat (precisely because except cereals everything has fewer calories than breast milk), so there is no reason to hurry when it comes to remove milk and give food and yes there is reason to continue breastfeeding exclusively to babies who take advantage of their properties.
