Can I 'improve' my breastmilk quality?!

[madmumNika]

Hello all, I am currently BFing my five-month old DD, although she gets one bottle of formula each eve. She has cystic fibrosis and has dropped off the 50th centile in the past month to the 9th, so was advised last week to start solids which she has taken to. However she is still feeding from me constantly all afternoon/eve until her bottle at 9pm. Community nurse wants to see her gain more weight in case she gets sick this winter and so thinks I should seriously consider reducing BFing and giving her more bottles of formula. However I'm also wondering whether my milk quality is poor as I've been running around like a loon and am pretty exhausted and not eating as regularly as I used to- can this make a big difference? Any good foods I should try to eat to improve the quality of my milk?

I breastfed DS exclusively for 10 months and never had any probs with his weight gain etc. but guess DD is different because of her CF.

All thoughts/tips greatly appreciated xx

I don't think formula is going to protect her from getting ill, it's usually the bm that does that. I also don't think you can improve the quality of your milk, even if you're a bit run down your body makes sure the baby still gets the best. You'd have to be seriously malnourished before it affected your milk. Maybe you need to slow down a bit though, being more relaxed seems to help supply, or it did in my case. If you want you can take fenugreek or drink that horrible fennel tea to help your supply a bit more.

I'm also not sure about the solids = putting on weight bit, mine plateaued when I put her on solids at 6mo, and she was eating 3 square meals a day.

I don't think your HV has been giving very good advice, but I'm afraid I know nothing about CF so maybe the advice is pertinent. I'm sure someone more expert than me will be along to give you better advice. I'm wary about HCPs, most of the ones I encountered gave varied and conflicting rubbish advice.

Nika, IIRC, breastmilk will not reduce quality, and I think my two slowed down their weight gain with weaning too. It takes a lot less food to fill up a baby tham it does milk, so I would imagine they don't get as many calories.

I'm sure one of the resident bf experts can tell you more, but until you've got some real advice, (factual stuff rather than my wobbly info!) I would hold off on what is being suggested.

I don't know anything about cystic fibrosis and bf, I'm afraid, but I do know that you can't improve the "quality" of your breastmilk - you can make yourself feel better by getting enough rest, eating and drinking enough, but it has no impact on your bmilk if you don't. Nature wouldn't have designed it so it did, really - having a baby is a time of great stress and sleep deprivation - bit dim of Nature to go "ooh, let's only give quality breastmilk to mums getting enough sleep"!

It's very common for babies to drop through the centiles at this age though. And also common for ill-informed health professionals to advocate formula, so I'd ask her for research to back up her insistence before making a decision that may impact negatively on your DD - as Fio's mum found formula did with her DD.

Lol Hunker, if God made nature and God was a man...............

It was a CF nurse who advised me about this, her rationale was that if DD does get ill she will lose a lot of weight, so they want her a bit bulkier in case- apparently those babies below the 50th centile get far more seriously ill when they get chest infections etc. and as formula can bulk babies up more quickly she thought this may be appropriate. As you can probably tell though I don't want to quit BFing altogether...but admit the amount she feeds is hard. And I am now worrying about her weight gain!! Might see how we go with 2 formula feeds and 3 BFs (or more) per day...and pack her veg purees with baby rice etc. in a bid for calories.

Glad to here that in your opinion not a lot affects milk supply!!

Is her creon (sp?) at the right level for the solids? My dn's took quite a bit of tweaking in the early days of solids - worth checking as definitely better to continue with the bm if possible.

Add a teaspoon of olive oil to the veg purees, loads more calories than rice and healthy fats too. You could do veg, rice + oil even.

Breastmilk's higher in calories than formula though, and solids too!

Exactly.

Agree with Fio Fio if the cf nurse is really concerned then there is a high cal type formula she could get. Personally I believe nothing is as good as bf for any baby but especially cf babies. Do it for as long as you can. She may quickly stop feeding as much as she is doing. These things can start and stop so fast.Seek more advice and good luck.

Keep feeding BF as much as poss. The antibodies will help enormously if your DD catches any bugs this winter. There aint no antibodies in formula.......