Does What I Eat Affect My Breastmilk

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This is a question every single breastfeeding mother asks herself. There’s plenty of conflicting information out there. In this article, I will do my best to give you clarity on how your body produces breastmilk and how your diet plays a part in that. Ready to dive in? Let’s go!

Breastmilk Production – How’s It Done

How does the body produce breastmilk? Your breasts are basically milk factories. You have mammary glands inside your breasts that are responsible for milk production. How do your mammary glands make milk though? Let’s break it down.

The Digestive System

To understand how your body makes breastmilk, we need to have a basic lesson on the digestive system. Your body needs energy to function, right? That’s why you eat food every day. Food provides your body with calories, which are units of energy, that give your body the fuel it needs to do different tasks.

After you eat your food, it goes through your stomach and eventually to your small intestines. Your small intestines is where your body absorbs the nutrients from the food you eat. This is where your body takes the energy and nutrition from the food and puts it to use throughout your body. Whatever your body doesn’t need is expelled when you poo.

Fascinatingly, after your small intestines absorb the nutrients from the food, it then travels in your bloodstream! Your blood carries the nutrition and energy from your food to different organs and cells in your body. Your body then takes the new energy and uses it in your body’s cells to perform different functions.

The Mammary Glands

So now the nutrition has gone from your mouth, to your stomach, absorbed in the small intestines, traveled through your blood stream, and has reached your mammary glands! Now your mammary glands take the nutrition and energy and converts it into milk for your baby. Amazing, isn’t it?

The more your baby nurses from you, the more your body is given the signal to make more breastmilk. As long as you pump or breastfeed your baby, your mammary glands will continue to make beautiful breastmilk for your little one.

Does What I Eat Affect My Breastmilk?

Now we get to the real question: does what I eat affect my breastmilk? In this section, we will look at what the professionals say. We will also take a look at what your babies have to say on this matter!

To be clear, the word “affect” here may be a little vague. When we say “affect” my breastmilk, some people may assume this is related to breastmilk supply. Others may think “affect” here means to change the flavor of the breastmilk for the baby. Still others may wonder if what you eat affects the quality of breastmilk. So keep that in mind as you read the rest of this article and do your own research. You really need to be specific when doing research and talking to lactation consultants or other medical professionals on this subject.

What The Professionals Say

Here is what the professionals have to say about diet affecting breastmilk.

Mayo Clinic – Eating different foods will change the taste of your breastmilk. (In their article “Healthy Lifestyle: Infant and Toddler Health”)

La Leche League – Breastmilk is made in the breasts and not directly from the food a mother eats. So what she eats does not affect her breastmilk. (In their article “Breastfeeding and a Mother’s Diet: Myths and Facts”)

Lactation consultants and Pediatric nurses: There are some lactation consultants and pediatric nurses who will tell you that what you each does not affect your breastmilk.

I had this experience when my first baby was screaming for 8 hours a day every day for months. I called the nurse on call and explained the situation and asked for help. She said, “You’re doing everything right…” When I suggested the idea of something in my diet possibly upsetting my baby and for help with that, she said, “Well, what you eat doesn’t really affect your breastmilk or make that big of an impact on your baby. So it’s probably not that.”

What Babies Have To Say

Despite what the professionals have to say or what they tell you, your babies are the real deal breakers who can tell you more about the quality of your breastmilk. Read below to learn what I mean.

I’ve heard from several mothers that what they ate irritated their babies in some way. Some babies were gassy after their mothers ate leafy green vegetables like broccoli or lettuce.

Other mothers experienced their babies crying more when they ate acidic foods like tomatoes.

I have one friend whose first daughter refused to drink her breastmilk after she ate garlic.

For me, both of my babies screamed for 8 hours a day every day for several months. This is not normal, by the way! If you experience your baby being unconsolable and screaming in pain every day for months on end, something is wrong! The professionals won’t know how to help you, because no one knew how to help me! Eventually, I learned that both of my children are allergic to gluten! Once I took that out of my diet, my baby stopped screaming completely after 2 days and the older child started growing (among other positive things!). Both of my children have been happy girls ever since!

Here the professionals were telling me, “You’re doing everything right” and “What you eat doesn’t affect your breastmilk so I doubt it’s something in your diet that’s hurting your baby.” The lactation consultant just told me to swaddle my baby and use ambiance noise to calm her (which did work for a while, but it didn’t fix the root cause).

We even took our first daughter to the ER because she had screamed for 7 hours straight and we had no clue how to help her or what was wrong. Do you know what the nurse told me? “Try nursing in different positions because that will help prevent sore nipples,” and that wasn’t even the reason we went to the ER!

Conclusion: Does What I Eat Affect My Breastmilk?

So does what a mother eats really affect her breastmilk? In some ways yes and no.

Yes

Clearly, what you eat does enter your breastmilk. The nutrients you eat gets broken down and carried to your breasts via the blood stream. Then your breasts use those nutrients to make breastmilk! So yes, what you eat does end up in your breastmilk.

Additionally, there are plenty of babies out there who can “tell” you what they think of their mother’s milk after she eats something they don’t like. For me, if I had gluten, my babies screamed for 8 hours a day because they were in pain! They had an allergy to gluten that I didn’t know about. If my diet did not affect my breastmilk, my babies would have been perfectly happy infants!

No

There is something to say about the makeup of your breastmilk that will never change despite what you eat. For example, if you eat an unhealthy diet, your milk is still going to have your antibodies in your breastmilk for your baby. That is something that will never change about your breastmilk!

Listen To The Professionals, Your Baby and Your Heart

At the end of the day, you are the mother of your baby. You need to be the one to call the shots on your diet, breastmilk and your baby.

Listen to what the professionals say, because they do have more experience than we do medically. They have seen more and studied more than we have on lots of subjects regarding infant and maternal health. So it is wise to listen to what they have to say to you about breastmilk and your baby’s health.

However, clearly they do not know your baby like you do. You are the mother, and if you feel deep in your gut that something isn’t right, listen to that!

You know my story of struggling to find answers to my baby’s extreme colic! No one could help me. The advice I was given never solved the root issue, and some of it was bad advice!

Imagine how my story would have been different if that nurse on call had told me during my daughter’s first month of life, that something in my diet could be causing her extreme screaming?

What if when we went to the ER, the nurse had said, “Yes, it’s not normal for an infant to scream in pain for 7 hours straight. Let me put you in touch with a GI specialist.” Instead of suggesting to simply nurse in different positions?

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You know my story of dealing with extreme colic for months on end with no one able to help me or my babies. That’s just part of our story. We also struggled with trouble latching, failure to thrive, engorgement, milk supply, nursing strikes, and more!

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