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Disclaimer: The information in this post is for educational purposes only. I am not a doctor. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice. None of the opinions are meant to diagnose or treat any disease or illness. You should always consult your healthcare provider.


Can I Improve Breast Milk for My Newborn?

Can I Improve Breast Milk for My Newborn?   BreastfeedingPlace.com #breastmilk #newbornBreast milk, all on its own, is a pretty perfect food for your baby. I mean, it changes as your child grows to meet their individual needs, produces antibodies to any illness that you have been exposed to – offering an amazing immune boost and protection for your baby, and even adjusts in supply according to how much your baby is eating. Pretty incredible, right? Can you improve breast milk for your newborn, though?

When it comes right down to it, your body really puts your baby’s nutritional needs first, even above your own. This helps ensure that he or she has absolutely everything they need to grow and thrive, which leaves very little room for you to improve breast milk in any way. However, there are a few key tips you can employ in those earliest weeks of breastfeeding that can help you to avoid some unneeded stress and tummy aggravation, which may indeed make it feel as though you have improved your breast milk!

Get Enough Healthy Fats in Your Diet

Fat content is one of the few things in breast milk you can actually help control the quantity of and healthy fats are very important to your baby’s new little developing digestive system. A simple way to tell if your baby is getting enough healthy fats is to check the color of their stools. Are they yellow and seedy, as they are supposed to be, or are they greenish? If they are leaning towards the green end of the spectrum that is an indicator that you need to pump up the fat.

So, does that mean you should run out and go grab a couple of tubs of Baskin Robbins?  Although that would be nice, the answer is no. What you should do is buy stock in avacados, coconut milk and coconut oil! All three can be added to smoothies, incorporated into snacks and even made into desserts. You can check on Pinterest for lots of different recipes incorporating each of them. Once you start getting serious about consuming these foods you should see a turn around fairly quickly in the quality of your baby’s stools.

Stay Away From Gas-Producing Foods

Just like the flavor of your milk changes based on what you have eaten, certain other qualities of the foods you consume are also passed along to your babe. Cruciferous, or gas-producing foods, are one of the main culprits for this and while they likely won’t bother your baby’s tummy too much in two or three months they can wreak havoc in the earliest weeks. So, do your best to stay away from beans, broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage until baby is a little bit older.

Limit Other Trigger Foods

The truth is that there is a long list of things that can upset newborn tummies for the first few months until their stomachs have adjusted to the outside world. While I am not going to suggest that you cut all of these items out of your diet completely until your baby is happily acclimated, I am going to suggest you at least limit these items. And if you do so, especially during the first four weeks, it certainly won’t hurt you and can only stand to make your life a little bit easier!

So, without further ado, here are some of the top offenders of newborn tummies: dairy, chocolate, corn, wheat, tomatoes, garlic, onions, caffeine, foods heavy in iron and soy products.

  1. Add fat.
  2. No gassy stuff.
  3. Limit triggers.

That sounds like a pretty good recipe to improve your breast milk for your newborn to me! It isn’t the easiest thing to do, but tailoring your diet to work best for your baby in those earliest days sure beats gas bubbles and long crying jags for both baby and you!

Just remember that it won’t last forever. Before you know it you’ll be sipping a mocha and watching that same baby toddle across the room! Like many other things in parenting, it’s worth it and it only lasts for a season.

Have you ever tried to improve breast milk for your little one? What helped you?

Sharing at My Joy-Filled Life.


MacKenzie is a suburban gal living a country life and likes to think of herself as being a crunchy mama in disguise! As a mama to 3 (so far), writer, homeschooler, homemaker, crafter and doula, she always has a project and thrives on filling her days with her passions. She blogs about her natural-minded, counter-cultural life, and tries to encourage mamas to live both graciously and boldly, at
Bold Turquoise.

Comments

  1. My LC told me that breastmilk is made up from your bloodstream and not the contents of your stomach. Only certain things pass through like alcohol, caffeine and milk protein. She also said that things like broccoli or onions causing gas is just an old wives tale and those babies just have gas. The timing is just coincidence. Also, babies are especially gassy around 12 weeks as their system matures. There are plenty of studies to prove this as truth.

    • Hi Abi- there are actually studies that lean both ways. And while yes, breastmilk is made from things that pass through the bloodstream there are other factors as well. My midwife of over 30 years instructed me in how to make my milk fattier in order to change my daughter’s stools and it worked- to me that is proof in the pudding. Also, it is widely known that breastmilk’s flavor is even changed dependent on what we eat, so obviously the making of milk is not just limited to our blood. Babies absolutely go through phases of gassier and not gassier but millions of moms through the ages can attest to their own experiences of changing their diet to help out there babies and I happen to be of the mind set that sometimes motherly intuition really is best.

  2. Thanks, love the key points of fats, keep away gassy food, and triggers. It’s simple to remember.

  3. I tried eating broccoli and you wouldn’t believe the gas my newborn experienced. Tried it again a week later and same result. Definitely not an old wives’ tale.

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