Do you avoid any foods while bfeeding? if so, which ones?

[pendulum]

Hi all,
I have a 6-week old DD2 who is finding it very difficult to settle/ sleep- she seems to have lots of lower intestinal gas and writhes around a lot trying to shift it. Various people (including my mother who has never bfed ) are giving me the usual advice about how I should cut x or y out of my diet- everything from chocolate to curry to green veg to milk to baked beans...... This happened with DD1 and I'm sure the sense of deprivation and that I was somehow 'poisoning' her led me to give up bfeeding quite early. I want to carry on as long as possible with DD2 who is a great feeder and piling on the weight, but don't want to live on chicken and boiled spuds for the next 6 months!

I would be really interested in others' experiences of whether mothers' diet makes a difference and, if so, which foods you think can be worth avoiding.

TIA

p

thanks for reply

have your dcs had the same kind of tummy pains? if so does it tend to pass in your experience?

i suspect it is more to do with her insides being 'new' IYSWIM and something that will sort itself out as she grows but i have had so much conflicting advice.

I also ate everything and anything. I did ry the plain eating for a week or so but it made sod all difference so went back to eating normally, including curries which appeared to up my milk supply.

Except in very rare cases of intolerance you needn't change your diet. Here in Italy they tell you to avoid certain foods, in France others and in the UK others again. So as you can see it isn't an exact science (or rather a load of bollox) and if you think about it in countries where the cuisine is fiery no one adjusts their diet at all.

Yes, and my DD had a period of fussing in the evenings from 5 - 12 weeks, then settled down.

That's what I reckoned. And much tastier than drinking fenugreek and cumin tea (bleurgh!)

The only thing I avoid when breastfeeding is actually fenugreek in large quantities -- it gave me and DS terrible gas and the runs. Everything else has been fine. Babies do just go through very gassy phases sometimes. It might be worth looking into baby massage as that can relieve it a bit.

fio, she saves her "special" screaming for evenings but the fussing/ waking is happening as i write

she has been fussing and whingeing since about 4.30am. will just about settle on me but wakes crying every now and again. wails the place down the instant i try to put her down. she is so obviously exhausted and so am i, i am beginning to lose my confidence and my patience...

dd fussed and farted a lot at from 4-6 weeks but seems to have got it sorted now

holding her upright for a good 20min after a feed seemed to help - someone here suggested laying her over your lap / arm / a gym ball, or laying them tummy to tummy with you in the bath to help them fart.
Also gentle tummy rubbing and leg bicycling

Never avoided anything.

I got given these horrible mixed herb galactogogue tablets that you had to chew. Foul stuff, left a taste in my mouth for hours. Made absolutely no difference either. Nor did the herbal tea (a litre a day of the stuff).

Went out a few days later and got an aloo gobi and chana dahl and the next day I was leaving milk trails all over the place. Gave me the excuse to eat curries till the cows came home. One of DD's fave weaning foods was curry, could there be a link do you think?.

My DD had to be burped a lot otherwise she wouldn't settle. Have you tried holding her over your shoulder for a good 10 mins?

I was advised by one of the UK's experts on bfing that you should be able to eat anything, so I did. However, my dss both had horrible colic from 5 weeks onwards, which involved lots of wind, and diarrhea (sp?) and screaming - at any time of day, not just evening.

With ds1 we tried cranial osteopathy, which helped enormously. He had been a venteuse delivery and that can cause head pains and affect feeding. He was fine after just two treatments.

With ds2 we found a magic medicine called colief. It's a bit of a fuss, as you have to express a few drops, mix the colief in with the expressed milk and give it to baby before each feed. However, it worked a treat and saved my sanity.

The colic eventually went away - 13 weeks with ds1 and 26 weeks with ds2(!) but we went on to feed for a lot lot longer very happily.

Do go with your instinct and do what feels right for you - and enjoy the feeding this time.

(I do know people who swear to have helped their kids by cutting down on a) dairy or b) 'windy' vegetables like cauliflower.)

The one thing I found I had to avoid was caffeine - it made ds's evening screaming bouts much, much worse. He's over that now but I still haven't been game to go back to caffeine (4.5m now and counting...)

oh good stuff about the milk production brangelina, i love curry!

thanks for your kind words fio, i seem to have gone a bit leaky around the eyes

things just seem really difficult today, i have had several weeks of feeling really together but now the daytime whingeing/ evening screaming/ lack of sleep/ inability to get anything done are really starting to get to me. hate the additional sense that i am doing something wrong just by eating beans on toast. thanks for the reassurance, chicken jalfrezi for dinner it is!

now having read the whole thread , I have to say - ds just wouldn't let me put him down, full-stop. Any attempt to do so resulted in screaming. I spent the first couple of months sitting on the sofa holding him, asleep or awake. Maybe your dd is a little bit like this?

i avoided cowes milk (couldn't stand the stuff), alcohol and curries when i was BF my LO.

weened myself back on to one glass in the evening a week after about 8 weeks post-partumn...

wine that is not milk!

oh and peanut butter, though i had a huge plate of mussels to compansate not having any seafood for months!

I was very sceptical about the concept that cutting out certain things would affect the baby but then DS2 arrived. Well DS1 had been unsettled with horrible colic but this was a whole new ball game. DS2 was utterly miserable, wouldn't sleep, cried all the time (literally) - it was grim. Anyway, to cut a long story short, it turned out that he has a cows milk protein intolerance. I cut out diary and within 10 days he was an utterly different child and I mean completely. It took until 5 months to get to that point mind and in the meantime we'd had various suggestions as to what might be wrong such as reflux, the ever gerneral 'colic'. IT took a lot of searching and the help of some wonderful people on mumsnet before I decided to give the non diary a go and oh how I wish I'd done it earlier. Have subsequently been to a paed and she confirmed - said no dairy until he's at least 12 months, special formula (now I don't bf anymore) until he's 2.

I'm not for one second suggesting that your DD has this but just wanted to share my experience and say that sometimes there is more to it than a baby that is generally "unsettled".