Breastfeeding and Diet Indulgences - please make me feel better

[DefNotYummyMummy]

My baby is close to 6 months old. This week so far my diet has been shocking.

Yesterday I had a packet of chocolate digestives and fish and chips for dinner. I had a pint of ribena before bedtime. (I was busy working around the house and didn't have time to do a proper dinner/lunch etc).

Then today I am exhausted after yesterday, but have managed some crisps, a full fat coke, a twix, a crunchie, 2 pieces of cheese on toast and some fizzy fruit juice.

I'm too ashamed to tell the health visitor this one - but also sick of being told to follow a healthy diet. By the way, usually I am pretty healthy with at least one of meals of the day !

Baby still EBF by the way. She's not interested in solids yet (must curb this diet by then as otherwise may gain back pregnancy weight !)

Just thought I would confess my sins. Please tell me I am not the only one with this guilty secret !

LOL at 'whatever you eat, your baby eats'! Nutter. Where do they get these people from, and can they send them back, please?

DS1 was nourished, and thrived, on EBF based on a diet of Millionaire's Shortbread, I seem to remember. Had never had the wretched stuff before joining the NCT, I blame them for all my weight gain problems.

Perhaps the OP's health visitor has ishoos about her breastfeeding a baby at 6 months? They can get a bit twitchy about that, bless them.

Thank goodness for MN, I'd probably still be seeing the HV dutifully every week if several people hadn't pointed out that I didn't have to go.

Significant quantities of ice cream covered with peanut butter and oreos were consumed during breastfeeding, and DS seems fine to me

Fine to eat a load of junk and going on a strict diet while bf would be daft, but if you don't eat any nutritious food alongside the junk then your body will suffer even if it never gets to the stage where your milk suffers. Much better for your energy levels and general health if you can manage some healthy food. If nothing else try taking a postnatal/breast feeding vitamin with your coffee/coke.

HV sounds a bit full on, but I think it's a bit harsh to crucify her for trying to encourage you to eat healthily. Just ignore her if you don't like the advice.

Btw confuddled you WILL have caffeine and high sugar in your blood/breastmilk if you survive on coke and tea, same as if you drink alcohol or take any medication. Doesn't stop me having a bit of anything I fancy but don't make the mistake of thinking your body has a magic way of passing on only good stuff to your baby and nothing bad.

Caffeine will enter breastmilk but the amount of sugar you have will not affect breastmilk- www.kellymom.com/nutrition/mom/mom-foods.html#sweets

The amount of alcohol you have in your blood is negligible. If you were at lethal BAC levels for a whole day, you'd give your newborn baby as much alcohol as in one dose of traditional gripe water.

If caffeine enters my blood/milk at the same rate, I'm not too worried.

I'm not making any mistakes, I've trained as a peer supporter, a Doula and I've done my own research.

Same with medication as I take thyroxine & presumably it not making my dd2 hyperthyroid.

Some medication gets into your blood stream but there aren't many. Even illegal drugs usually don't get passsed on. Most of what does comes from a prescription only a consultant can write.

Wow confuddled, that is interesting! shan't feel toooo guilty about that night out a few weeks ago then - 3 pints and a tequila and a baby who wouldn't take the bottle of ebm and only wanted me when i came home.

petisa, have a look at how much BAC you need to be over the drink drive limit. That % is describing exactly the same thing as ABV, so BAC is like saying the ABV of your blood. It's an interesting way to waste an hour, working out ABV of blood (and by default milk).

I've written about it so many times on Facebook now that I've seen people who must have C&P'd me!

Two weeks after I had DS I was back to pre-pregnancy weight.........then I put 7lbs back on eating a ridiculous amounts of biscuits, cakes and chocolate.

Have been known to bring the whole packet of those M&S marshmallow teacakes to the sofa and eat all 16. If Dh gives me a , I just say

"What? I have to eat! I'm breastfeeding."

A couple of times I have felt the lure of the golden arches but I feel too embarrassed going in there with DS in the pushchair. Stupid I know - he's 4mths- he's not exactly going to judge me!

This is my favourite thread ever - a glorious combination of breastfeeding, chocolate and HV bashing, all in one lovely place! It's got a bit serious on this page though - anyone?

I loathe my HV with a passion many of us reserve only for interfering MILs. My HV told me I was BFing too much and that DS1 should be on 3 meals a day! She told me off for suggesting to a friend in our postnatal group (a young single mum) that she cosleep with her daughter rather than following HV's advice to "let her cry it out". What a knobhead!

Same HV came round for DS2's six week check this week. DS1 objected to her picking up "his" baby and said loudly "mummy I want to put that lady on the naughty step!" I worked very hard to keep a straight face and look apologetic while inwardly pmsl until she had gone. HV has been on the naughty step in my head ever since!

So far as BFing and poor diet goes, asked DH to pick me up a twix in the supermarket 3 days ago. He came back with a 24 pack of single twixes. They're all gone. Nuff said!

So glad I am normal!

"My HV told me I was BFing too much and that DS1 should be on 3 meals a day!"

Should have said. He was 5 months old. FFS.

confuddled i am confuddled... could you please explain again? so if i drink 4 units of alcohol what percentage alcohol is my milk?

Oooh Woodlands, you're stretching my brain!

First off, whenever I use the word "blood" it is interchangeable for milk.

Right, one unit is 10ml of alcohol so four units is 40ml (easy bit!) You take out about 90% of that so 4ml goes into your blood stream. The average person has 8 pints of blood which is 4546ml so your BAC is 0.08% which is the drink drive limit.

If you have an 11lb baby they're taking approx 750ml of milk a day. (This is the formula they use to feed babies EBM in hospital)

Assuming your baby is feeding hourly:

In the first hour your baby takes 31ml which gives them 0.02ml alcohol.
In the second hour your baby takes 31ml which gives them 0.013%
In the third hour your baby takes 31 ml which gives them 0.01ml
In the fourth hour your baby takes 31ml which gives them 0.005ml
In total they've had 0.048ml of alcohol, but chances are they've not fed hourly so had a lot less than that, that's how much they would get in that hour though as you process one unit an hour.

Rogue % in there, it's supposed to be 0.013ml. The reason the numbers may not seem to match up is because they were quite long so I rounded them.

That is really interesting Confuddled, thank you.

My DS is 5 and a half months, BF and i am constantly ravenous. I can manage the morning without scoffing, but have to have lunch at 11.30am, then by 4pm i start looking at my baby wondering how he will taste (he is very chubbly)

Still got a stone to go (at least) and i am also doing lots of baking because at least then i can add banana/pear/raisins to the cakes in a vague attempt to get one of my 5 a day The danger is that i have recently discovered the 5min chocolate mug cake.

I'm so happy to read this thread!
I just can't stop scoffing a huge amount of cake and biscuits, so glad to see I'm not alone. I'm eating plain choc digestives and telling myself they're good for me cos the plain choc has iron in it.

Goodness isn't encouraging women to carry on breastfeeding hard enough without making them feel guilty about what they're eating. (said as she tucks into large bowl of spare ribs and 3rd glass of wine before breastfeed in an hour.....)

willows, that's easily my biggest problem with food/ drink/ alcohol guidelines for breastfeeding women. It's not necessary and why should I breastfeed and be restricted when I can do what I want with a bottle?

The only time people need to worry about their alcohol consumption is when they're not capable of looking after their child, but that's true however you feed them. It's actually safer to drink and breastfeed than to drink and bottlefeed (and after the last time I said that on MN, whatever is in the bottle, I'm actually talking about using EBM in this instance, but it's always true).

love this tread!
my day so far!

full english brekki, with an extra 2 pieces of toast whilst i waited.

half a packet of rich tea biscuits.

beef stew and dumplins with 4 pieces of very well buttered bread!

I have a bottle of wine,
rib eye steak, real chips, mushrooms, onions, peas, onion rings oooo and pepper sauce! for tea!

I have been feeding my lovely bundle of joy for 15weeks, and my appitite is fab.

My dd is happy and im happy what more can you ask?

but sadly the only pressure i have had put on me to loose my baby weight superfast has been from other mums who had there babies at the same time as me .

i might add that they all ff.
i would rather look at my little girls chubby cheeks every hour of the day eating cake!

the diet comes later!!
hooooray

Today I had fish and chips, giant Lionbar and an entire packet of Maryland cookies. My only concession to health was a yoghurt.

confuddled do you know how anything about how well a babies liver processes that alcohol? Bearing in mind babies have far less blood volume, even if they ingest a lower amount of alcohol would their immature liver cope with processing that?

eaurouge just because kellymom is 'on the internet' doesn't mean it's the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Do you believe everything you read in the newspaper? That advice about sugar in the breastmilk contradicts all the evidence and advice that a mother's diet can affect babies' wind, poo, nappy rash etc. I'm not saying that one is right and the other isn't - I have no idea and like most mother's have to work out for myself what suits me and my dd - I'm just pointing out that you need to apply the same scepticism to anything you read on the internet as you (quite sensibly) seem to do with any advice from health visitors.

Same goes for advice from anyone on this forum, even if they claim to have qualifications you have no idea whether they really do.

The figures I posted was an extreme situation, a large amount of alcohol and a lot of breastfeeding and it was still less than a single dose of traditional gripe water with 3.6% ABV, 0.04ml is 0.8% of 5ml.

I'm not claiming to be an expert in anything, I use information that is easily accessible to anyone, I encourage people to look it up for themselves and explain my maths all the way. The government website to see what's in a unit and what the drink-drive limit is (0.08% BAC, btw) and simple maths. If you want a little project on the side you can look up different %BAC and see what happens at each stage either to the body or drink-drive limits around the world or what it equates to in a drink:

In the United Kingdom, the following definitions apply by law:

No alcohol or alcohol-free: not more than 0.05% ABV
Dealcoholised: over 0.05% but less than 0.5% ABV
Low-alcohol: not more than 1.2% ABV

Fruit Juice is usually 0.1% or less.

So if I've drunk 4 units and fed my baby hourly legally what they've had is alcohol free.