The Pediatrician's Guide to Feeding Babies and Toddlers: Practical Answers To Your Questions on Nutrition, Starting Solids, Allergies, Picky Eating, and More (For Parents, By Parents)

"Pediatricians Porto and DiMaggio offer a systematically organized, practical, and up-to-date guide to baby feeding from birth until toddlerhood. Their work will leave parents feeling informed but not overwhelmed. [...]xa0Parents will find the chapters useful to read through as their children reach each stage, and well enough organized to use as a reference when particular concerns come up." — Publishers Weekly “Dina and Anthony’s book is a goldmine, chock-full of up-to-date information and clear answers to virtually any feeding question a mom or dad could have.” —Jenna Helwig, Food Editor, Parents magazine, and author of Real Baby Food " The Pediatrician’s Guide To Feeding Babies and Toddlers is one of the best and most complete manuals for parents and Pediatricians alike. It is written so that a non-medical reader can clearly understand it and yet the contents are so complete that it should be mandatory reading for every Pediatric Resident. What I loved best about the book were the authors’ personal anecdotes and the fun recipes sure to please every age group.xa0I highly recommend this book and will now have a go to book to recommend to my patients." —Amyxa0 R DeFelice, MD,xa0Pediatric Gastroenterologist, Columbia University,xa0Director, Nutrition Support Servicesxa0Associate Professor of Pediatrics Dina DiMaggio is a board certified pediatrician working at Pediatric Associates of NYC and NYU Langone Medical Center. She completed her medical training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She has received numerous research awards, Patient’s Choice awards, compassionate doctor recognition, and was featured in the New York Times Magazine as a Super Doctors in 2014 and 2015 New York Rising Star. She is dedicated to educating parents on baby and toddler nutrition and gives talks to parents throughout New York. Anthony F. Porto is a board certified pediatric gastroenterologist, an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, and Associate Clinical Chief at Yale University. xa0He completed his medical training at Tufts University, Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, and Columbia University. He has received xa0numerous awards including the Norman J. Seigel Award at Yale University for leadership and outstanding clinical care and Physician of the Year at Columbia University. xa0He has been named Castle Connolly Top Doctors since 2012. Anthony is interested in nutrition, especially in the care of children with difficulty gaining weight, feeding issues, and celiac disease. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Introduction The Pediatrician’s Guide to Feeding Babies & Toddlers combines the expertise of a group of pediatricians, a dietitian, a lactation consultant, and two chefs. More importantly, we are also parents to a total of thirteen children. Most of us met during our medical training and cultivated strong friendships during our many long days and nights working together in a hospital. After completing our training over a decade ago, we felt that we were prepared to practice medicine. We couldn’t imagine, however, how much our careers would be enhanced by our roles as parents. When Dina’s daughters, Julia and Evelyn, were born just twenty-one months apart, Dina realized she didn’t really know how a mother was feeling until she was a mother herself. As we were writing this book, Anthony was learning the ins and outs of fatherhood as he cared for his newborn son, Sebastian. Persephone was busy chasing after her twin toddler boys, Sean and Aaron. Janet bonded with her newborn daughter, Annie, and toddler son, Sid. Liza was busy helping her daughters, Emilia and Anna, with their homework and coordinating after-school activities; Susan was going on college tours with her son, Caleb; Alison developed recipes while taking care of her newborn son, Azriel; and Dini cooked alongside her little girl, Andi, while taking care of her newborn daughter, Jolie. Caring for our own children has helped us to understand the fears, anxieties, and questions of parents on a deeper level. Over the years, we have discussed how often parents would ask the same questions about feeding their children. We found that parents did not know where to turn for guidance and became frustrated with trying to find the right information on their own. We also know that Google-searching (yes, we all do this, often bleary-eyed in the middle of the night!) can lead to additional anxiety and confusion. We believe that feeding should be fun, stress-free, and family-oriented quality time. We created this book as a resource to provide easy access to common feeding questions from the minute an infant is born through the toddler years.xa0 Dina, a general pediatrician, and Anthony, a pediatric gastroenterologist, who are the lead authors, assembled a team that includes a pediatric allergist, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician, a pediatric dietitian, and a lactation consultant, along with two family chefs to help answer common feeding and nutrition questions. This book was also reviewed for completeness and accuracy by an additional board-certified general pediatrician. The goal is to present the most current evidence-based information in an easy-to-read question-and-answer format. We understand the reality of parenthood and use this knowledge, along with our medical acumen, to develop practical approaches to the feeding and care of infants and toddlers. We want the best beginnings for the children we take care of, for our own children, and for your children. How to Use This Book We have divided the book into five age groups from the newborn period to the early toddler years. Every section contains expected developmental milestones, basic nutritional guidelines, expected growth, common medical concerns, and ends with examples of developmentally appropriate recipes that contain tips to alleviate potential medical issues encountered at that stage.xa0 In chapter 1, we discuss infants from birth to 3 months of life and end with healthy recipes for breastfeeding moms and hungry caregivers. In chapter 2, the 4 to 6 months group, we discuss the new challenge of how best to feed a baby solid foods and answer questions that commonly come up at this early stage of infant feeding. In chapters 3 and 4, we discuss the 7 to 8 month and 9 to 12 month age groups, respectively. As your child increases intake of solid foods, we will address common questions such as balancing solid food and milk intake, how to transition to finger foods, and choking hazards. We will discuss topics such as celiac disease, failure to thrive, iron deficiency anemia, and diarrhea. In chapter 5, we focus on the early toddler years, guiding parents on how to deal with picky eaters and providing healthy choices as children enter the school years. We end with chapter 6, which discusses the most common medical concerns in more detail and includes additional references and resources.xa0 We designed this book not only to be a reference, but also a reassuring guide through the stage that your baby is in or about to go through. You can, therefore, use this book in multiple ways—by quickly finding out the answer to a current concern, by reading the section that your baby is in now or about to be in, by reading the entire book and then referring back to particular sections later as you need them, or by referencing chapter 6 to find out more details about a specific medical concern.xa0 We look forward to sharing our knowledge about infant and toddler nutrition, learned from our many collective years of caring for children in the medical field, combined with our practical experiences as parents ourselves. Raising a child provides you with some of the most extraordinary times in your life, but as we know, it can also be overwhelming. We hope to ease some of the stress of this journey by providing you with information you can trust and valuable insights into the world of childhood nutrition, so you can spend less time searching for answers and more time enjoying these fleeting moments. Read more