Low fat diet and BF - is DD not getting enough fat in my milk? Advice please

[sunfl0wer]

Help

I've been following a low fat since my dd 6 weeks, but not restricting calories - she is now 5.5 months old. I eat when I am hungry and I don't starve myself. I know all the advice is not to diet when you BF but I've consulted my HV & GP throughout and they've not had an issue with my diet.

My concern is that I am producing enough volume of milk but not enough calories/fats in it for dd.

She has dropped from the 91st centile at birth to the 25th and has remained on the 25th - although my HV isn't concerned about her weight gain.

She feeds very regularly including through the night (every 2 hours!) and its full feeds each time, not just a suckle to get back to sleep.

The other problem we have is that she wee's for England - I mean she produces a serious volume of urine.
We use washable nappies and I have one that the manufactures say will absorb 12oz of fluid - and she leaks out of that after 6-8 hours. That cant be normal can it? her normal bamboo nappies are saturated after 2-3 hours during the day - again they should last between 3-4 hours at least as they are more absorbent than cotton ones.

Personally - I think that dd is having to take such a huge volume of liquid in order to take in enough calories for her growth.

Does anyone have any information or research on milk production and maternal diets?

Any help/advice or information would be greatly received.

sunflower - you cannot adjust or affect the amount of fat in your breastmilk by increasing or decreasing the fat in your diet. It doesn't work like that - the type of fats can differ from woman to woman, but the amount of fat in the breastmilk is pretty much the same across woman-kind, and is affected by the volume of milk in the breasts at any one time .
If you want to know more about this, I can give you references to academic papers which demonstrate it.

I agree that it is unusual for a baby to drop from 91st at birth to 25th, but the vast majority of babies who do this are following their own physiological pattern. As long as their health and development checks out, and as long as the mum is not trying to restict or schedule breastfeeds, then the assumption should be that they are fine. Your baby's been checked by GP and HV, and she's doing well, and no one is concerned about her weight....sounds like you are still worried, though

Babies who feed a lot wee a lot - I have no idea what the normal urine amount is for babies, but some babies do go through a lot of nappies!

I hope you can find some reassurance and feel a bit better about your dd - nothing you say here indicates a problem, honestly.

Just to reiterate what tiktok says. The only way your diet would affect your milk would be if you were seriously starving and malnourished.

My dd did the opposite, born on a lower centile and by a few months was just above the top line and stayed there.

She fed every 2hrs day and night until 7 months and weed like you would not believe. She was saturated within a couple of hours.

She sounds fine.

Well done you for keeping up with a hungry baby. I remember how hard it was. Well, it still is as she's still feeding at aged 2 but she sleeps more now!

Just to add purely anecdotal experience - my DD had kidney troubles at birth so we've obviously always been really aware of her urine output (for her first week they weighed every nappy!) and it's always been really high - and the doctors/ consultants have always said that's a GOOD thing! So unless you have any other reason to worry - and it sounds like you don't - I think it all sounds good.

Thank you ladies - you have helped to reassure me.

Tiktok - you sound like you've got experience/expertise in this area. Thanks for the offer of references - can I take you up on that?

I've had her weighed this am and she is tracking just above the 25th centile so maybe thats where she's meant to be and the high birth weight was the anomaly.

Right - I think I'll be getting myself a couple of bamboo towels and my sewing machine out to engineer a nappy that will last the night with my super widdler