Guess What Your Baby Tastes In The Uterus

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Does your baby get fussy about the food he eats? Or does your baby has started taking solid foods but shows a preference for a certain taste? Then consider this:

Your baby’s sense of taste began to develop much before birth. In fact, your child’s taste buds start to develop while still in the womb, eight weeks after conception.

The foods that the mother takes influences the amniotic fluid surroundings of the baby and as the baby gulps the amniotic fluid, it is introduced to variety of flavors. If your young one is showing a preference for a certain flavor, it could directly be associated with their being exposed to that flavor right in the mother’s womb (Beauchamp 2011).

A newborn has more taste buds than an adult. Apparently a baby has around 10,000 taste buds, far higher than in adults. They occur not only on the tongue but also on the roof of the mouth, the back and the sides of the tongue. The redundant taste buds disappear in some time.

The diet that a mother takes also influences the flavor of breastmilk, suggest studies. It seems, nursing babies are more likely to try out different flavors as soon as they commence intake of solids. (Beauchamp 2011; Maier 2008).

Babies are sensitive to sweet and bitter tastes at birth. They are born with a liking for sweet and an aversion to bitter. (Beauchamp 2011; Schwartz 2009). It could explain the proclivity of babies for sweet foods from the very beginning. They would have indulged in that ice-cream you had while they were in the womb. But after birth, they display the penchant for sweet foods by their liking for breastmilk – that is if you are nursing your baby. On the other hand, it might also be nature’s way of keeping the baby away from bad or toxic foods that are usually bitter and prepares them for foods that are high-calorie which are usually sweet.

Your baby’s taste buds mature once it is fourteen weeks old.

The sense of taste is often accompanied by a sense of smell in babies. It explains why a newborn will turn its head towards a the smell of breastmilk. In an experiment, a 5-day-old newborn was found to do the same when a pad soaked in breast milk was place in the vicinity. At the same time, your baby will turn away from an unpleasant smell, for instance, its dirty diaper.

Your baby’s sense of smell will also influence his choice of flavors. It might turn out that your baby enjoys a carrot-cereal if you had carrot juice when pregnant in comparison to the babies whose mothers were no carrot lovers.

Apparently babies swallow more amniotic fluid when it is sweet than when it is bitter. So if you had pungent foods recently, your baby might swallow less of the amniotic fluid.

Towards the third trimester, your baby gulps up about a liter of amniotic fluid a day! It helps your baby get ready for breastfeeding as mother’s milk also carries the flavors of the foods she eats.

The sense of taste is evident even in a premature baby born at around 33 weeks that is known to suckle harder on sweetened nipple than a plain one.

Babies react to salty foods only between three and six months of age.

The taste preferences of babies change with age. If your baby preferred sweet foods when very young, he might begin to ask for salty foods in the later stages.

As the babies grow, they begin to develop their independent sense of taste and preferences. (Schwartz 2009)

Your baby may take ten to fifteen times to like food, so you need to be patient.

So if your baby has been refusing to try out new foods, think twice. Put the blame on yourself if you think you weren’t eating healthy while you were carrying. Try out different combinations instead of sticking to simple rice and applesauce paps or the monotonous cereals. And above all, remember to breastfeed your child because it molds your baby to willing to accept different foods.

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