Breastfeeding? What is healthy eating?

You may have been told not to stress about your diet too much. That as long as you are eating healthily, then you’re fine. However, with the fast-paced changes in our foods these days, the rise in intolerances, and the fact that what you eat impacts your baby’s digestive comfort, well, biology makes it clear that what you eat has to go beyond what would be considered a “normal” healthy diet.

As most Mum’s know, breast milk is produced from our blood. The process involves the mammary glands filtering nutrients and antibodies from the bloodstream to create milk. It’s incredible! Components like water, fats, proteins, vitamins, and minerals are extracted from the blood, making breast milk a unique blend designed to nourish your baby, and if any of these components, and others, are out of balance then this can impact your baby’s overall wellbeing.

Diet from baby’s biological perspective

Newborns receive all the nutrients from a Mum's breastfeeding diet via the villi in the small intestines as they transfer the nutrients into the baby's bloodstream, and like adults, they can then react to that food. Additionally, we are all born with a naturally high level of permeability in our intestines, which can allow undigested foods to translocate and actually go into the bloodstream, leading to the development of food allergies and intolerances.¹  Furthermore, a breastfeeding Mum that is eating too much of one type of food, or perhaps something that their baby naturally struggles to breakdown, like corn or the proteins in dairy, then this can exacerbate symptoms even more. Let’s take sugar as an example of this…

Now before I share this, please know that I found sugar one of the hardest things to avoid when I was breastfeeding. Because, and I’ll admit it, I can be a bit of a sugar fen! And I think a lot of us women turn to sugar for energy and use it as a “treat” to get through what can be long postnatal days. But unfortunately, that sugar can make for even longer days as our newborns negatively react to the effects of our sugar consumption.

In the short-term the sugar, whether it be from too much fruit, or eating fruit that your little one shouldn’t ideally have (like stone fruit) drinks, or those lollies that you just had a handful of 😉, sugar spikes or crashes can cause: 

• increased thirst
• frequent urination
• headaches
• irritability
• bloating and excessive gas
• explosive stools
• diarrhea or constipation
• refluxing (aka Digestive Overload the real cause of reflux and what I specialise in healing naturally)
• flatulence (passing gas)
• muscle spasms in the abdomen (sharp stomach pains)
• nausea
• unsettled sleep
• issues feeding because of the digestive discomfort

So ideally, a breastfeeding Mum would be quite mindful of her sugar intake, inclusive of her carbohydrates, which also of course turns to sugar. So, here’s one of my number one tips for sugar…

Eat no sugar, other than one carbohydrate for dinner, after 2pm in the afternoon. This helps to reduce the discomfort that our newborns often exhibit in the evening hours, and can make for a better night sleep for them.

Additionally, the breastfeeding diet can also contribute to, or create the symptoms of Digestive Overload for infants, the real cause of colic, reflux, silent reflux, lactose and dairy overload, and some cases of mis-diagnosed cow's milk protein intolerance. This may be from eating too many windy foods, or too many carbohydrates in a day, or a particular food that is best to be avoided like dairy, flaxseed, chickpeas and much more, with some of these actually being presented to breastfeeding Mum's as being healthy and okay to consume.

Also, as I'm sure you know, we as parents need to be very mindful about the ingredients in our foods, and our infant's foods these days. There are a lot of new ingredients sneaking in, with one of the most concerning being maltodextrin. This is now in baby formula and solid pouches, chips, biscuits, sauces and more so I urge you to read all of the labels to avoid this, and if you'd like to know my other top four ingredients that I suggest you avoid, please click here. 

Keep reading to hear about the Diet from a Mum's Biological Perspective after Breastfeeding Diet Plan advert...

Diet from a Mum’s biological perspective

As we women all know, breastfeeding requires additional calories and nutrients to support both your energy levels and milk production. While your body can still produce high-quality milk even if your diet isn’t perfect, eating well can help you:

• feel better
• produce enough milk
• ensure your baby gets essential nutrients
• gain the 300-500 extra calories per day that you need for breastfeeding
• recover well after birth and keep up with energy demands.

So, to harness better overall health for yourself and baby, whilst clearing the confusion around what you can and can't eat check out my Breastfeeding Diet Booklet and Meal Plan. 

Also, if you’d like to ask me any questions about your diet, or have any other breastfeeding issues like oversupply, low supply, recurrent mastitis, pumping, or perhaps baby's symptoms while feeding, then come and join me for my Group Coaching on "Navigating Breastfeeding Issues" in my BabyCues Infant Gut and Maternal Health Community, on the 4th of November, and again on the 18th.

I hope to see you there.