Eating for two doesn’t stop once the baby is home. If you are breastfeeding, then you need to make sure that you are consuming the proper balance of food, both to keep you healthy and recovering well and to ensure that your breastmilk has the highest nutritional value for your baby.
Breastmilk is an amazing thing. Your body will actually steal stores of nutrients from itself in order to manufacture the best food for your baby. But some nutrients cant easily be stored, and if your supplies run low then you will suffer. So eating right is very important.
First, continue to take your prenatal vitamin while you are nursing, unless your doctor tells you otherwise. This will help ensure that you remain strong. Some brands of vitamins may make your baby colicky. I haven’t experienced this for myself, but I have heard of it happening. Simply switching vitamin brands should eliminate the issue.
Next, just as you did during pregnancy, try to skip the empty calories from food such as soda, candy and pre-packaged snack foods. You want to make sure that you get all of the good stuff in first.
That said, you shouldn’t go on a diet to lose your post baby weight. Right now the best thing to do is to make healthy choices, but without restricting your calorie intake. Nursing naturally uses up to 500 calories a day.
Make sure that you include servings from the five basic food groups. These groups are: bread, cereal, rice and pasta (six to eleven servings); vegetables (three to five servings); fruits (two to four servings); meat, poultry, fish, beans, eggs and nuts (two to three servings); and milk, yogurt and cheese (two to three servings).
It is also important to make sure that you get adequate vitamin D during this time.
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