My employee was late yesterday. He says he had to take his first born 7 month old baby boy to the pediatrician because of loose bowel movement. Ah yes, panicking young first time parents abdicating their common sense to the “expert” pediatrician. Totally pointless and senseless and he lost half a day’s work. It was my moral duty and boss duty to educate my employee about how to care for his baby in the vested interest he puts in more time in his work.

They were fearing the usual blah, get stool samples, do a lab test… give hydrating chemicals you buy at the drug store, blah, blah and more useless blah. Okay mister, lets’ take this one step at a time to be able to solve your baby’s problem. What have you been feeding him? So, they’ve started giving the little baby some other “food”, not mother’s milk. They gave him some “lugaw”, cooked rice in water… hmmm…. The child is fully breast fed since birth and only 3 days ago they began giving “lugaw”. It’s so obvious… hello!!!

First of all, 7 months is deemed too young to be given polluting cooked food. Breast milk is best for babies up to 2 years. Cooked food is not the human ideal food. My in laws start giving solid food only after the baby is 1 year old.

What could have gone wrong with the “lugaw”? Well let me ask you these questions first time daddy:

- Is the rice you bought organic? Did the farmer use pesticides? How long has the rice been harvested? Length of storage? Did you buy it in a whole sack or did you buy it by the kilo where possibly cockroaches have criss-crossed over it?
- Did you use tap water when you cooked your rice?
- If you used the store reverse osmosis water, do you have a TDS meter to check if the store bought reverse osmosis water has less total dissolved solids than your faucet water?
- Did you cook your rice in an aluminum rice cooker?
- Do you use non-organic commercial detergent to clean all your kitchen utensils, your spoon, your bowl, your rice cooker and are you sure you were able to rinse away every bit of the detergent making sure your child was not able to consume any detergent?
- It’s quite possible your child is not ready, not able to properly digest the new food and the only new food you introduced… explaining his loose bowel movement.

“See? Once you calm down and think, it’s a no brainer. I’ve been in that panicking parent position before. Fear clouds your judgement. Now go back to your wife and tell her what I taught you. And please read the book I gifted you, Healing Our Children by Rami Nagel. If she’s serious about learning how to raise your children properly she will find all the time to read the book.”

I hope that fixes that. We’ve got a lot of work to do next week.