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A Guide For New Mothers Seeking Healthy Diet During Breastfeeding

A Guide For New Mothers Seeking Healthy Diet During Breastfeeding - ReLacto

Breastfeeding takes a large amount of your energy as your little bundles of joy drain nutrients from your body. As a result, at the end of each nursing session, you may feel weary and hungry. Breast milk production is taxing on your body; you will need up to an extra 500 calories to achieve this requirement.

Breast milk is well-known for containing a wide range of nutrients and health benefits. Consuming lactation-friendly foods and beverages to increase your breast milk should be prioritised since the nutrients obtained from your breast milk are critical to your child’s growth and wellbeing. Talk to your suggested nutritionist, dietitian or lactation consultant about lactation food if you want to know what foods to consume to increase breastfeeding and also ensure that you are getting the nutrients you absolutely require.

For today, however, we would be looking into something called Lactation Meals, also known as lactation-friendly meals. These are, in our humble opinion, absolutely necessary for nursing moms. 

It helps to support you while you breastfeed and prevents you from being malnourished. Furthermore, breastfeeding not only encourages your child’s healthy growth but also benefits in postpartum weight loss. Keeping yourself fed, on the other hand, may be challenging as you balance postpartum recovery, housekeeping, and child care. As a consequence, it’s understandable if you dismiss the need of eating a well-balanced diet or keeping a lactation diet chart.

This then brings up the question:

What is a healthy diet?

We have touched on it a bit in the preceding paragraphs, but let’s go into more detail here. 

You’ll surely have heard of this thing called a wholesome and balanced diet by now, haven’t you? Well, that’s really what we mean by a healthy diet. It’s one that helps you get all the nutrition you need, not only to sustain yourself, but also to ensure your body is working in tip-top condition so that you can recover, have enough energy to take care of your child, or even to produce enough breast milk in order to continue breastfeeding.

So, be sure to get in your fibre, vitamins, proteins, iron, folate, basically everything that you can find off the food pyramid and actually stick to the recommendation of that pyramid.

What constitutes a healthy diet for breastfeeding?

For this, we’d like to address the ‘breastfeeding’ part by stating that it would benefit you to have food that will boost or supplement your breastfeeding capacity. That usually involves using something called lactogenic ingredients in the food that you eat.

What are lactogenic ingredients?

A lactogenic ingredient is an ingredient that, when eaten, has properties that affect your body on a biological level and helps you produce the milk that your little one requires. Some examples of traditional lactogenic ingredients popular among mothers include Ginger, Garlic, Fenugreek, and Moringa Oleifera, just to name a few.

It is also crucial to realise that you may not notice immediate results just because you’ve eaten some lactogenic ingredients. This is because biological processes cannot be changed overnight, so what you do today may only show results in days or even weeks. Remember, each person is different and will have unique biological needs.

Putting it all together

You may be wondering – “So, lactogenic ingredients and a balanced diet, those should provide enough nutrition for both me and my kid, correct? Is that all it takes to create a successful breastfeeding journey?”

That’s both a yes and a no. Bear in mind that your breastfeeding supply would very much depend on the same principles that drive any good economy – supply and demand. The more you pump and the more frequently your little one feeds, the more your body will recognise the demand and therefore will increase supply accordingly. Nutrition and diets will help this to a certain extent, but will not be the be all and end all. However, it is still good to have a balanced and nutritious diet nonetheless as you really to stay healthy as long as you breastfeed. 

This then brings up the idea that the food you’re eating has to be able to support you through that journey and fuel you with the energy that you require to continuously breastfeed while ensuring you are not putting your own nutritional health at risk. 

Side note, since you’ll be eating this diet for at least a few days, it wouldn’t hurt then to have some diversity to break up the monotony of life and spare you from a repetitious diet.

Also, did you know that keeping hydrated can…well…help keep you hydrated as you continuously breastfeed? Therefore, you could look into supplementing this diet with lactation beverages to give you the liquids you need to continually and constantly breastfeed.

Closing words

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If, by this point, you are feeling overwhelmed by all the information we are giving you, don’t fret. We could have made it more detailed by talking about the specifics of lactation beverages or why you need to have a lactation diet chart, but we’ve opted instead for a simple overview for all you new mothers who are seeking a healthy diet for breastfeeding.

Let us make things even simpler for you right now by saying that we are also a provider of healthy diets for breastfeeding. We call it our ReLacto lactation meals. We’ll go even further by giving you a bonus tip: head on over to our website and browse through our menu to see what varied and mouth-watering dishes we have from both fusion and Chinese cuisines.

So, stop Googling for “lactation food Singapore” because we got everything you need here at ReLacto.

Author

  • ReLacto

    We are a team behind the leading lactation meal provider and we believe proper nutrition during breastfeeding is not just something to be experienced, but also worth learning about. On top of preparing nutritious meals for mothers, we’re passionate about researching and sharing useful information on nutrition for lactation and recovery, and occasionally tips on baby weaning through our blogs.