Is there any proof that what we eat affects our milk...

[G1nger]

E.g. I get a distinctive smell of peas from my baby! ;)

Flavours do get into the milk - vanilla and garlic are especially known for this.

If your baby (rather than your milk) smells of peas :) then is it not more likely that you have been cooking peas or something that smells like peas, and your baby has picked it up on clothing and hair?

Or maybe you are wearing a strange sort of Xmas perfume which has been transferred, and while you don't smell it on yourself, you can smell it on your baby?!

I mean my babies farts ;) Maybe I should treat him to some vanilla (and me to cake!)

Oh look - babies = baby's !

When I was bfing my ds, the only thing that seemed to make a difference was when I drank prune juice for constipation (mine, not his). It made him quite pumpy and loosened the consistency! I am a bit more careful with it now with dd.

When I eat onions, my dd gets wind.

My baby smells like baked potatoes...that's what's DH has cooked for us most evenings since I left hospital!

I've always wondered this - if the flavour makes it in there then can other components? So if the chemical that makes onions induce wind is the same as the smell could it make your baby windy?

Not quite the same I know, but I remember reading (probably on here!) that the mother's diet affects the milk remarkably little, and that there is pretty much no difference between milk from a woman who lives on Greggs and one who lives on the finest and most nutritionally balanced organic diet known to man. So if that's true (and I don't know if it is), wouldn't that mean chemicals from onions etc were unlikely to filter through?

Snowy, milk differs very little in nutritional quality between mothers on different diets, but flavours are known to affect it and some constituents do reach the milk. It does not reduce the 'standard' of the milk which is known to remain high whatever.

I can't think how the gaseous aspects of veg like onions and cabbage and so on would affect the milk, or how something that helps constipation in the mother would affect the milk, and sufficiently to affect the baby, as these constituents work by staying in the mother's gut. If anything gets through it must be in absolutely minute traces. However some mothers say they have seen these effects in their babies. Much of it may be coincidence, I think, but maybe it does happen sometimes.

It would be 'overkill' (in my opinon :) ) for someone to cut out dairy - which is hugely difficult as there is dairy in many foods - because the baby appears to be 'windy'. Whatever that is.....:)

Normally, this would be tried only if the baby was showing serious signs of distress or illness, and if nothing else had worked.

In some cultures do nursing mothers cut out foods? For some reason I seem to have read that somewhere but could be wrong.

Also given that things like painkillers, antibiotics and alcohol pass into BM, why not the wind causing bits of food? Wind can be a sign of difficulty in digesting or not broken down by the stomach so the particular element can get quite far before being dealt with.

Have any studies been done?

I should say I have an interest as DS was sensitive to dairy and soya so I cut it out although never quite believed it until I had a soya latte and he suffered so that convinced me. I've cut dairy again for DD (but I'm only doing this as I know just how much DS seemed to be troubled - more than wind but silent reflux).

I think chilli does - had two nights with a very unhappy baby after eating curry/chilli con carne, and he's normally very unbothered. Chilli can pass into other bodily fluids anyway so it's not surprising.

Yes, it's true other cultures have food restrictions when bf, for all sorts of reasons.

The 'wind' causing elements of onions and other foods are because they are difficult to digest, being fibrous, producing 'wind' as a by product of the bacteria in the small intestine. The fibre does not pass into the bloodstream and therefore does not get into the milk.

There may be other constituent parts of onions and other foods apart from fibre - maybe they get into the milk. I don't know. Someone with a nutrition degree might know :) By the time they are in the milk, they are pretty broken down, though.

Thanks, Tiktok, for answering my query - I had been wondering about that. Thanks.

I'm tempted to eat more peas and see if he turns his sleeping bag into a Dutch Oven again...

My poor mum had to avoid all eggs for 9 months of breastfeeding. She ate chicken Kiev type thing where the breadcrumbs were bound in egg and I stopped breathing. Wasn't until she ate an egg sandwich and I stopped breathing again that they made the link