How much water does an infant drink every day?

60-70% of the human body is water. Water plays an important role in the process of metabolism in the body. Water helps the body to discharge toxins. For young children, water is even more important.

From 0-6 months of age, the most important nutritional source for children is breast milk. Experts recommend that babies under 6 months of age should be exclusively breastfed without any additional food or drink. Practicing giving your child early drinking water can affect the development of weight, height, and even life risk.

At this age, the child's kidney function is incomplete. If you drink more water, your child will need to urinate more. Since then, the amount of sodium in the body has been lost, negatively affecting the activity of the brain, leading to unpleasant symptoms, drowsiness, hypothermia, facial edema, cramps, convulsions or having faint.

According to Master Le Thi Hai, National Institute of Nutrition, children under 6 months of age who are exclusively breastfed or fed formula formula in accordance with the instructions on the box, do not need to drink water. However, if a child has a lot of sweat due to rickets, or goes outside the constipation, give him 100-200 ml of water a day.

When babies are 6 months old, mothers can start giving children water. By this stage, children have begun to practice weaning. Nutrition for children during the weaning period is quite rich and diverse, requiring the young body to have water to support new food sources.

From about 6-12 months, babies need about 100 ml of water per kilogram of body weight, a day (including milk). For example, children weighing 8 kg need 800 ml of water, if they drink 600 ml of milk, it is necessary to add 200 ml of water a day in the form of cooled boiled water, fresh fruit juice, boiled vegetable juice .

In addition, to know if your baby has enough water or not, you can pay attention to your child's urine color. Usually, the child's urine is clear, light pink or light yellow is enough water. In case of dark urine, dark yellow or orange yellow, children may be seriously deficient in water, mothers should supplement their water in time.

For children over 1 year old, mothers can use the following formula to calculate the amount of water that children need to drink each day.

Children weighing 10 kg need 1 liter of water / day (including milk), children weighing more than 10 kg, then each additional 50 ml of water.

Formula to calculate the amount of water to drink in a day:

Amount of drinking water (ml) = 1,000 ml + nx 50 (where n = number of kg of child - 10).

Children aged 10 years and older, drinking water by adults: 2-2.5 liters per day.