Breastfeeding Diet: Tips for Healthy Feed

While she is breastfeeding her baby, what the components of her breastfeeding diet are, affect the nursing mother and her baby's nutrition. The breastfeeding for the mother might vary depending on how well she feeds her baby. The nursing mother produces at least 23 to 27 ounces of milk per day, containing 330 milligrams of calcium per quart. She needs an extra energy expenditure of at least 500 calories per day. Good nutrition is thus necessary for you to stay healthy and keep your baby healthy too.

Danger Signals for the Breastfeeding Mother

The quality of breast milk is most affected when the nursing mother deprives herself of food, or when she eats too much of a particular food. The quantity of milk depends very much on her diet. The food that a nursing mother absorbs not only fulfills her own nutritional needs, which are greater during the period following pregnancy, but also enables her to produce milk. The woman who ignores her nutritional requirements by not feeding herself properly, exposes herself to a host of problems. While it is not definite that if she does not feed herself sufficiently she won't have a healthy baby (the baby might indeed be healthy), her own health might suffer in the process. What might happen is that when you deprive yourself of nutrition either due to ignorance or deliberately, your body will make milk production its first priority, and ignore your nutritional needs.

Something similar happens during pregnancy, when the nutritional needs of the fetus are satisfied before those of the mother. Later, in spite of weighing only a few pounds, a baby will receive nearly 1,000 calories per day in breast milk! The mother might suffer deprivation if she is not looking after her own food needs which will have to be increased. She will also have to give up doing a few things in order to maintain a healthy feed for her baby.

Feed Yourself

What does the nursing mother have to do to go on a healthy diet? She has to increase her water consumption by one quart per day, so that she is drinking a total of 2.5 to 3 quarts. Nursing women tend to be thirstier, especially during feeding sessions, because part of their water consumption goes directly to producing milk for their infants. But she must be careful not to drink too much water: too much of it can reduce the production of milk.

She has to increase her daily caloric intake to 2,500 calories: she can even eat more if she is planning to continue breast-feeding for more than three months. During this time, she has to feed herself the equivalent of 2,800 calories per day for herself and her baby. Many nursing mothers are tempted by sweets in the breastfeeding days; sticking to healthy foods like proteins, work better. The basic rule is to eat I gram of protein each day for every pound she weighs.

She could spread her caloric intake over five "meals," breakfast, lunch, after- noon snack, dinner, and an extra snack during the evening. Each snack time is an opportunity for her to drink water, eat a low-fat dairy product, and a piece of fruit. As her body is continually producing milk, it needs the caloric intake to be regular in secreting milk sufficient to feed her baby.

The breastfeeding mother should eat food containing vitamin B 9. Birth control pills accentuate a woman's vitamin B 9 deficit, and may even contribute to a vitamin B 6 deficiency. During pregnancy, folic acid is vital to the development of the baby's nervous system. Nursing mothers are well advised to continue taking their prenatal vitamins to maintain their body's supply of folic acid. Folic acid can also be found abundantly in asparagus, cabbage, corn, chick- peas, and spinach.

Stay Away from Intoxicants

Certain don'ts include her staying away from tobacco. Nicotine passes directly through breast milk to the baby. If she must smoke, the nursing mother ought to build in a gap of at least an hour between her last cigarette and her next feeding session, so that the nicotine in her system can be at least partially decomposed. She must also avoid regular consumption of alcohol. Alcohol passes through milk in less than an hour and if the baby consumes alcohol in large quantities, it can retard the baby's growth. The nursing mother who must drink an occasional glass of wine or beer, can save it for after a feeding session.

Another don't is taking no medication without first consulting a doctor. Most antibiotics, sulfa drugs, chemical laxatives, and all products containing iodine are dangerous to her while she is breast-feeding. Other medications, taken over a long period, can be dangerous to the breastfeeding mother, too.

She should beware of pollutants. For example, like nicotine, pesticide residue easily passes through mother's milk. The nursing mother should stay away from insecticides (especially in airborne forms such as aerosols or coils), and instead try to use natural insect repellents such as citronella. She should eat primarily unsaturated fats. Sunflower, corn, rapeseed, and olive oil provide fatty acids that are essential for building the baby's nervous system.

From the life-giving liquid water, to a healthy snack of a low-fat dairy product, and a piece of fruit, spread over the day, and eating the prescribed meals and pills, the breastfeeding mother can create a diet that addresses her caloric needs and keeps her baby happy at the same time.