Infants’ transition from milk to solid foods - the lived experiences of first-time parents

ABSTRACT

Purpose: During the transition from ingesting milk to ingesting solid food, infants substantiate their eating habits. The present study focuses on this transition. Specifically, it aimed to explore first-time parents’ lived experiences of their infants’ transition from milk to solid foods.

Method: The study is based on the descriptive phenomenological approach Reflective Lifeworld Research (RLR). Ten mothers and ten fathers were interviewed twice; when the infants were aged four to five months and again at seven to eight months of age. Data were analysed according to RLR principles.

Results: The findings show that the transition from milk to solid food is a demanding in-between phase. The physically intimate feeding situation is replaced by unfamiliar situations in which parents and infant are physically separated and new types of food are introduced. The process of feeding requires parents’ full attention and sensitivity towards the infant’s reactions.

Conclusion: The study highlights how shared parental experiences were reflected in frames for how a meal should normally proceed, including parents’ desire to create healthy eating habits and uphold harmony duringfamily meals

We suggest for health professionals to present parents with a wider frame of normality, especially as concerns the concept of what constitutes “normal” eating patterns.

KEYWORDS:

• Infant food
• feeding behaviour
• parent-child relations
• transition phase
• descriptive phenomenological study
• qualitative study

Acknowledgments

The authors want to acknowledge the parents for their willingness to participate in the study and for their time, hospitality, and trust.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Annelise Norlyk

Annelise Norlyk is an associate professor in nursing science and study director, at the Department of Public Health, Aarhus University, Denmark. She has a Master of Nursing Science Degree and a PhD Degree in Nursing Science from Aarhus University, Denmark. Norlyk’s research has primarily been in the area of hospital-home transitions and patients’ recovery post discharge, existential dimensions related to patients’ and relatives’ experiences of living with chronical illness, and on improving nursing care of patients suffering from chronical illness. Her work draws primarily on hermeneutic and phenomenological research approaches. Norlyk has a particular interest in methodological and ethical aspects related to qualitative research. She has a long list of publications within this area.

Jette Schilling Larsen was study director for the Danish Health Visitor Education at Via University College, Denmark, and PhD student at the Department of Public Health, Aarhus University, Denmark. She was a health visitor and had a Master of Nursing Science Degree from Aarhus University, Denmark. The focus of Schilling´s research was to understand and help parents to cope with the challenges faced in relation to breastfeeding and the transition from milk to solid food. A fatal disease bear the blame that she had to give up in the middle of her work with the PhD study: “A transition - from milk to family food. An action research project on the health visitors” guidance in the infant’s transition from milk to solid food’. The present study is part of this PhD study.

Hanne Kronborg is an associate professor in nursing science, at the Department of Public Health, Aarhus University, Denmark. She has a Master of Public Health and a PhD Degree in Nursing Science from Aarhus University. Kronborg’s research is in the field of interdisciplinary research in early and health promoting interventions, with focus on breastfeeding and the early relationship building between parents and their newborn mature or premature babies. Kronborg has a particular interest in health prevention, theories, strategies, models and methods.