Why not give water before six months?
Introduction
There are many new parents who wonder why they shouldn't give their newborn water before six months.
If you are reading these lines, it means that you have been advised not to give your baby water and herbal teas for the first six months of his life.
Why is this a bad habit? In the next lines of this article, I will answer this question.
The content, as you can see, is preceded by an index, inserted to give you the opportunity to delve deeper into the facets of the topic with a simple click on the paragraph titles.
I also invite you to discover, for a complete and fascinating journey to discover the secrets of healthy eating in early childhood, the video course dedicated to self-weaning curated by Doctor Federica Dell'Oro, the nutrition biologist of the DrSilva Academy (it is accessible from the button at the end of the paragraph).
If, instead, you are interested in content related to your little one's development, I'll be waiting for you on the Instagram profile @drsilva.com_official .
Why not give water to newborns?
The answer to the question “ Why not give water before six months? ” is one: the fact that milk, whether it is breast milk or formula, already contains a good percentage of water.
As highlighted by Dr. Pilar Nannini, pediatrician, in this video , in the case of breast milk we are talking about approximately 85%.
All the water intake necessary before six months therefore comes from milk (it makes no difference whether the baby is breastfed, formula-fed or mixed-fed).
By giving water to your puppy before six months of age , you risk overfilling his small stomach, effectively giving rise to a false sense of satiety.
This opens the way to a double problem: on the one hand, by drinking water, the puppy does not gain weight because it lacks calories.
On the other hand, given the lower demand of the breast, milk production decreases.
Another important aspect to underline when wondering why not give water before six months concerns the exposure to the risk of overloading the kidneys.
