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A happy chubby baby is an obsession for all mothers. We all have constantly been fed on the idea that chubby babies are not just cute, they are healthy too. This idea is embedded in our minds by poems, TV advertisements and the likes.
If you are worried that your baby is thin, despite all the efforts you put up to make him/her eat nutritious foods, don’t fret! There might be relatives and friends taunting if you are not giving proper food to your baby because they resemble the malnourished ones of the other world. Just relax and maintain your cool, because chubby babies are more likely to be obese and slower in their motor skill development as compared to thin babies.
Studies point out that children who are heavier than their peers at 24 months are likely to become obese when they reach adolescence. You are the lucky mother of a healthy baby if you do not have to rush to the doctor often, if your baby has completed all milestones and if your baby is pleasant and happy. Let your baby remain thin! Thin is healthy.
Check the activities
There are lots of activities the kids normally engage in. More activities mean more calories to be burnt naturally resulting in a thin baby but a healthy one.
Stop being paranoid about all the excessive activities and constant running around that your baby engages in. It is only through active learning that kids grow up. Their fine motor skills and gross motor skills have to be developed. If a child is very active and continuously runs from this corner to that, be it at home or in the garden, it is very likely that he/she hardly gets time to complete the meal. Their ‘play time’ preoccupies their mind. Such babies have frequent meals because they feel hungry often. But each meal is left incomplete which is the reason why they have to rush for frequent meals. You may sit with your baby and ask him/ her to complete the meal. This way, the digestion process would also be maintained because we need to give the gut some rest!
Premature babies likely to be more obese
According to the Journal of Neuro Science Research, experiments were conducted on rats as rats have a great similarity to human babies. Initially, the food given to rats was controlled so that they produced pre-term babies, which are lower in weight than their peers. The rodent babies thus born were put under observation and it was found that they eat more because the neuropeptides disrupted in function.
Neuropeptides are protein-like molecules, which help the signaling activity in the brain. The disrupted function of the neuropeptides in pre-term rats resulted in the intake of larger calories with less amount of energy expenditure. The same case applies to human babies as well. So, if your baby is premature, always check with a pediatrician on how to balance the diet. That is, do not be happy when your baby suddenly starts fattening up and gets the chubby guise that you have always dreamt of.
Donât feed your baby to being unhealthy
A popular study suggests that in an experiment conducted with rats, it was found that those rats whose diet was controlled and systematic became healthy as they grew up rather than those rats that were fed excessively. The rats that were fed excessively were diagnosed with higher levels of cholesterol and became obese as adults.
Try not to over-feed your babies if you find them thin and do not load them with high-protein, high-fat diet that they might find very difficult to digest. Avoid sugary cereals and all those junk foods that promote the concept of a healthy obese baby. Remember chubby is not always healthy!
So, just keep a record of your baby’s activities and food habits. Note down the times when you visit the neonatologist and also keep a track record of the baby’s vaccinations. Your baby might be thin, but he/ she is HEALTHY.
