First of all, this article is long and takes 2-3 minutes to read. If your child is 1-3 years old, be sure to read and understand carefully.
Today, regular hospitals recommend that infants be exclusively breastfed until 6 months of age. Exclusive breastfeeding means that the baby does not need to consume other foods (other than vitamin D) or fluids unless advised to do so by a doctor.
Our bodies need sun exposure to synthesize vitamin D. Most Chinese have lower than recommended levels of vitamin D, which may be due to people spending too much time indoors and sunscreen being widely used to prevent skin cancer. Vitamin D deficiency can lead to diseases such as rickets, characterized by malacia of bones.
Although moderate direct sunlight is beneficial, children should use sunscreen, hats, and protective clothing when they spend a lot of time outdoors to prevent sunburn and reduce the risk of skin cancer later in life.
According to the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics, an authoritative medical institution, infants should be supplemented with vitamin D (unless they drink more than 300 ml of formula per day, and additional vitamin D is added to the formula).
For infants under 1 year of age, 400 IU of vitamin D per day is recommended;
For children older than 1 year, 600 IU of vitamin D per day is recommended.
So is iron supplementation needed?
During the first 4 months of life, breastfed babies do not need additional iron supplementation because they are born with enough iron to support their early growth.
However, as growth accelerates, the baby's iron stores gradually decrease, and the baby needs iron supplementation. For 4-month-old infants who are partially or exclusively breastfed, they should receive oral iron supplementation with 1 mg of iron per day at 1 kg of body weight until they start taking complementary foods that can supplement iron (e.g., high-iron infant rice flour).
If you have had complications of pregnancy or childbirth (such as diabetes), or if your child was born underweight, was born prematurely, or if your child is small relative to a child of the same gestational age and is breastfed after birth, he may need to start iron supplements in the first month of life. When you start giving Zhenyu complementary foods, he can get some iron from meat, high-iron baby rice flour and green vegetables!
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