Table of contents:
- What is Rotavirus?
- Key recommendations
- What is allowed and what is not?
- Drinking regime
- Diet after illness

2023 Author: Alfred Shackley | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 13:14
Any disease at an early age is quite difficult, it is difficult for the body to cope with it, since the immunity of the toddler has not yet matured. A number of diseases in babies begin abruptly, spontaneously. Among such insidious ailments is rotavirus in children, the treatment of which requires adherence to a special diet.
A certain diet will allow you to avoid dehydration of the body, saturate it with elements that give it strength to fight the disease, to avoid exhaustion.
What is Rotavirus?
It is an infection that most often affects the body of young preschool children (from six months to 2 years). The popular name for rotavirus is gastric or intestinal flu. Another name for it is rotavirus gastroenteritis.
The toddler can become infected from other children or adults, even if they themselves are not sick, but are carriers of the infection.
The disease does not appear immediately, but only after a few days, because the incubation period of the disease is from 1 to 5 days.
The onset of the disease is evidenced by the following symptoms:
- Nausea, vomiting;
- Cramps, pain in the abdomen;
- Deterioration of general well-being;
- Heat;
- Diarrhea.
Symptoms of the disease are similar to those of many other childhood illnesses, such as cholera, salmonellosis, food poisoning. In this regard, only a doctor can determine the exact diagnosis.
If a competent line of treatment is applied, a diet is followed, the ailment recedes a maximum of a week after the first signs of the disease appear. After rotavirus, the baby develops immunity to this type of infection.
Key recommendations
The specificity of the disease and the peculiarities of its treatment are that a special diet is the most effective measure. Even the use of effective drugs does not provide such high guarantees of recovery as a correct diet.
What is the result of the diet?
- Thanks to it, the load on the organs of the digestive system is significantly reduced;
- It allows you to protect the little patient from dehydration;
- A specially developed diet allows the body to provide the crumbs with the necessary substances.
Here are the basic rules of the diet for children with rotavirus:
- Meals should be fractional. Little ones should take food and drinks in small portions. In this case, it is necessary to maintain certain intervals between meals, which should not be long;
- The first days of the illness are characterized by the fact that the baby refuses to eat. You cannot force-feed him, but he must still receive food. In this case, you can give the child chicken broth (you need to cook it from the breast, removing the skin from it), strong tea, jelly made from natural fruits and berries;
- Over time, the little patient will have an appetite, and then a therapeutic diet can be applied, which involves the need to cook all products by steam or by boiling. Food should be given to the toddler in crushed form until the diarrhea subsides.
What is allowed and what is not?
During treatment, you need to know which foods the baby should not eat, and which ones should be given to the little one.
It is necessary to exclude from the diet:
- Pearl barley, barley, millet porridge;
- First courses cooked in fatty broths;
- Cocoa, chocolate;
- Raw fruits and vegetables;
- Baking, fresh black bread;
- Fatty meats, sausages;
- Pasta.
Also, with rotavirus, it is necessary to exclude fried, salted, smoked food from the diet, and preservation. As for fish, you can give your child its dietary varieties, but only boiled or steamed.
Not all vegetables can be given to the toddler either.
He should not use those that contain a large amount of fiber - it can irritate the intestines. First of all, this applies to garlic, onions, radishes, radishes, cucumbers, cabbage, including cauliflower and cabbage.
You can not give the child and cow's milk, which is a favorable environment for the spread and development of infection. In addition, during the illness, the child develops lactase deficiency, in which the body of the crumbs cannot break down lactose (milk sugar) with subsequent assimilation.
Products useful in treatment:
- Porridge made from rice flakes or semolina in vegetable broth or plain purified water. Sugar and butter cannot be added to the dish;
- Broth made from dietary meat, to which you can add cereals or boiled vegetables;
- Eggs. It is desirable that they be homemade, and you can cook steamed omelets from them;
- Fresh pureed cottage cheese. It doesn't have to be sour. You can not feed the child with curds and curds bought in the store;
- Steamed cutlets from dietary varieties of meat and fish will be useful;
- Baked apples without skin.
Both with rotavirus infection, and for some time after its retreat, carrot puree should be prepared for the baby. Carrots must first be steamed or boiled.
You cannot eat fresh bread for a child, but you can eat homemade bread crumbs from a loaf. You need to dry them, after cutting off the crust from the bread.
Here's a sample diet you can follow when treating rotavirus:
- For breakfast, you can eat a steamed omelet or cottage cheese, a small portion of buckwheat porridge (you can give rice or semolina). You can drink breakfast with tea with crackers;
- At lunchtime, the child can be fed with low-fat soup or broth, steamed cutlet. The baby can wash down lunch with rosehip broth;
- The toddler can dine with carrot puree or porridge, steamed meatballs.
During the day, it is allowed to have several snacks, while baked apples should be given to the little one.
Drinking regime
The child needs fluid. During the treatment of rotavirus, you need to drink a lot of water, and it is better if it is a water-salt drink - it is very useful. You can buy it ready-made or cook it yourself, however, children are very reluctant to use it in its pure form. But experienced mothers share a recipe for making a drink that will suit the baby's taste - it turns out to be sweetened due to the addition of raisins to it.
This is how the drink is prepared.
- Boil a third of a glass of raisins in 1 liter of water for 1 hour;
- Let the broth cool, strain, carefully knead the raisins so that as much of its pulp as possible gets into the drink;
- Add ½ drinking soda to the broth, 4 tsp. sugar, 1 tsp. salt;
- Boil the mixture for 2 minutes, let it cool.
Rice broth will also be very useful in combating the disease.
Here's how to cook it.
- Put 4 tbsp in boiling purified water. l. rice;
- Boil the cereal for 2 hours - this time will be enough for the rice to soften;
- Wipe the rice with a sieve into water, add 1 tsp to the mixture. without a slide of salt and a little soda.
Diet after illness
When the ailment recedes, the baby should not immediately return to the usual diet.
When following a rotavirus diet in children, avoid giving your child the following foods for several weeks:
- Legumes that can cause flatulence;
- Rye bread;
- Cold drinks and dishes, as they contribute to the difficulty of the digestive system;
- Millet porridge;
- Beets, cucumbers, since these vegetables contain coarse fibers;
- Whole milk;
- Sauerkraut, because it can also cause flatulence.
For some time after the cure, you can not refuse to include herbal decoctions, rice drink and saline solution in the baby's diet.
If you find symptoms of rotavirus in a crumbs, you should consult a doctor. Often, parents begin to treat poisoning, not knowing that their baby has encountered intestinal flu, which only a specialist can recognize.