Proper nutrition during breastfeeding is one of the components of success in the development of the baby. It is difficult to overestimate breastfeeding: through mother's milk, the baby receives not only all the necessary trace elements for development, but also gets acquainted with the outside world. Therefore, a properly organized diet for breastfeeding is important.
Diet basics
For some reason, a woman who has just given birth believes that with the advent of babies, the diet of a nursing mother is a limited list of products. This is partly true, but only partly. Immediately after birth, for the physiological reasons of the mother, a fairly narrow list of foods is recommended. But this is not so much connected with the need of the baby, as with the physical condition of the mother after childbirth.
In the first week of life, a baby diet when breastfeeding a newborn is actually an adjusted Pyramid of healthy eating. A new mother is recommended to eat cereals, fruits and vegetables, as well as dairy and meat products.
We select products correctly
Most of the servings should be plant foods. However, the choice of ingredients should be taken with extreme caution. So, you should at the very beginning abandon brightly colored fruits and vegetables, giving your preference to pale yellow and green. In addition, it is worthwhile to subject fruits and vegetables to heat treatment. So, in the first days after childbirth in the diet of a nursing mother, there should be baked apples, baked or boiled potatoes, boiled or steamed carrots, baked green bell pepper. Spices should not be neglected, although only parsley and dill are allowed. Like vegetables, cereals should also be treated with caution. You should start with buckwheat and oatmeal, gradually introduce rice, millet, and barley. But decoys should be abandoned.
Separately, it is worth noting the consumption of bread. In the diet when breastfeeding a newborn, it is necessary, because contains useful vitamins of group B. However, they should not be abused, especially white bread. Ideally, the daily intake of bread and bakery products is 300 grams.
A balanced diet for breastfeeding also includes a group of dairy and meat products. In the postpartum period, the main fermented milk products will be low-fat cheese, natural yogurts, low-fat cottage cheese. The meat subgroup allows only beef (best veal), chicken and rabbit meat. Meat products are best steamed or boiled. It is also worth including in this group the use of butter.
But the use of sweets, smoked products, industrial and home canned foods should be abandoned. All of them contain, to one degree or another, preservatives that are prohibited for use by a nursing mother.
The diet for breastfeeding strictly individually calculates the drinking regimen. According to WHO recommendations, a doctor may limit fluid intake depending on the physical condition of the mother and climatic conditions. However, the volume of fluid consumed should not be lower than 2 liters per day and include vegetable broths, juices, fruit drinks, teas and clean water.
Introducing a new
Having established lactation, a nursing mother can gradually introduce additional products into her menu. Expand the list of diet ingredients for breastfeeding is not earlier than a month after the birth of the baby. The first in the list of introduced products should be vegetables and fruits, then cereals and dairy products of high fat content (cottage cheese, cheeses). It is important to monitor the baby’s reaction to the new product. It is easiest to do this with the help of the “Food Diary” - a kind of table in which the name of the product and the child's reaction to it are entered.
Proper organization of the diet during breastfeeding will allow the mother not only to provide her baby with all the necessary elements, but also to gradually “introduce” the baby to a variety of foods, which will greatly facilitate the further introduction of complementary foods.