Yesterday, a midwife friend asked me for formula ideas for a 3 1/2 month old adopted baby.  This one no longer has access to the community’s human milk supply.  She had the benefit for other mother’s breast milk exclusively for a while – kudos to those adoptive parents for arranging it!  The baby is now being given a formula with organic cream top pasteurized (not homogenized) milk with nutritional augmentation.  The baby is very constipated, going with great difficulty and assistance after 4-5 days, and the midwife advised some water intake. She wanted more ideas.

Today’s header is a big topic and I’m choosing to focus on the midwife’s client’s needs mostly.  You may run into cases with babies who do not have access to breast milk or enough also, so I thought to share my response:

Complicated formulas with cow milk are being promoted by popular nutrition gurus.  I’ve seen popular recipes with raw egg and liver, nutritional yeast, several types of fats, vitamin C crystals, et al.

These certainly may provide more prana (life force) than canned or dried formulas and non-organic ingredients.  Ayurvedic medicine indicates concerns for short and long term  food combining issues, which complicate tissue if not also GI tract digestion.

This can result in slow or quickly accumulating wastes in baby’s body.  In addition, mental factors are involved in different types of foods ingested by the mother, nurturing different mental tendencies for babies.

Some such factors may not be easily understood through scientific models of analysis.  This is due to limited understanding of the sequence of bodily nutrition, and probably not having method to evaluate the effects over time.

There is the “transit time” ie in GI tract, and the longer time for transformation from food into various tissues.  The transit time is certainly affected by how difficult to digest, and what drying, astringent and bitter qualities are in the food for baby or adult.  Food from powders, old food, refrigerated food, food eaten under unpleasant emotions and other factors contribute to constipation.  Undiluted cow’s milk and the added brewer’s yeast (heavy, dry and bitter influences) will contribute.

We have enzymes for each of the 6 major stages of digestion, which correspond with the 6 tastes, over approximately 6 hours in the adult digestive tract.  This is much quicker timewise for babies who are ingesting basically, just some form of milk.  The same principles apply however.

Breastfed babies seem to take minimum 2 hours more often 3 +.  For formula fed babies, including on cow’s milk, it is longer due to harder to digest foods.Food combining can confuse proper enzyme secretion and as a result, leave incomplete products of digestion to accumulate in the body somewhere.

After GI tract digestive processes, this nutritive chyle moves into the lymph and joins the blood, circulating throughout the tissues.  From one tissue to the next deeper etc through all 7, there are different transformative chemistries, enzymes if you will.  And more time – days are involved, not just hours in this process.

Yes, the added water in the formula itself (in this case, usually advised distilled for babies), plus the digestive support of the spices cooked in, plus the triple boiling, and the mineral rich sweeteners all help balance nutrition and support baby’s access to it.

That little bit of turmeric helps many functions in baby’s liver and small intestine, and it’s bitter taste gives b-vitamin support as well.  It is important here not to use raw turmeric.  All 4 spices (recipe to the right) help reduce gas and bloating.  Fennel though not laxative, helps normal peristaltic action and is ph reducing.

Some Ayurvedic physicians, specializing in babies, assess the individual baby’s constitution and imbalances, and further fine tune any recommended formula based on that.

We prefer and advise to not complicate baby’s body with the food combining and digestive issues known for thousands of years.  In addition as you probably know, it is more and more significant to use organic ingredients, GMO free feed for the dairy animals and it’s many effects through the milk on digestive system, hormones and tissues; and if possible, unhomoginized milk.