How much does what you eat or drink affect your breast milk??

[InmaculadaConcepcion]

OK, we know that alcohol gets into your milk and also certain drugs.

But what about other things?

Caffeine, for example?

Or food? I have read that eating pulses/brassicas can cause flatulence in the baby. My DD (9 weeks old/ 4 weeks premature) has real problems with wind so I've cut these things out of my diet to see if it makes a difference. Related to that, citrus has been mentioned as potentially problematic or there's lactose intolerance which may be related to cow's milk (FWIW, I don't think my DD has that).

I guess foods must sometimes affect the taste of the milk - witness the chef who made cheese from his wife's EBM and said the flavour varied according to what she'd been eating.

There seems to be anecdotal evidence about this, but is there any REAL evidence? Presumably it must also vary from woman to woman, too.

Can anyone give me the benefit of their knowledge or personal experience on this one?

Thanks!

Citrus fruit can definitely cause problems.
I craved fruit all through my pregnancy, very awkward as I'm allergic to a lot of fruits. To get round the cravings/allergies I was drinking lots of fresh orange with lemonade. I carried on when DD was born and it wasn't long before she developed terrible colic.
We were using Infacol but it didn't seem to be working until a HV asked about citrus fruits. I'd already been told to avoid green veg and spicey food but never heard about citrus fruit causing problems.
I stopped drinking my favourite tipple and by the next day DD was so much better. We still had to use Infacol until she was about 14 weeks, but at least it worked then.

Technically foods don't alter the components of milk, and last time I researched this there was no evidence that diet affects the baby. From my own experience, I cut everything out bar air and water and my baby still had terrible colic and wind. But plenty of mums will tell you differently, so who knows?!

Kellymom webpage on breastfeeding mum's diet

In a nutshell, it is very rare for a baby to react badly to anything in a mother's diet.

It is thought that milk varies in taste dependant on mother's diet, which is a good thing priming a baby in the typical cultural diet which he/she will be weaned onto.

I have read how a mother's diet can affect the type of fat in breastmilk, but not in a negative way just a different type of fat.

I have never seen the effect of anything I have eaten throughout my breast feeding "career" - (33 months & counting). I really think that in many cases giving up food has the same effect as a placebo - you are doing something so you see improvement, this may be imagined or may have come anyway. There are few studies on breastmilk but kellymom is a great resource should you wish to seek them out

from science direct...

www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B758G-48FBPBC-JK&_user=10&_coverDate=01%2F31%2F199 6&alid=1273615255&rdoc=3&fmt=high&orig=search&cdi=12926&docanchor=&view=c&ct=1206&acct=C0000 50221&version=1&urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=eed322927e13c519d2225ee440297409

tada...

no idea why there is a massive gap there.. at least the link still works.

I have a fear of cauliflower now...

What a load of crap that not eating green veg or spicey food.

Thanks for all the replies!

Not sure about that study, seems to be based rather too much on anecdotal evidence and not hard scientific fact. Interesting to look at, though.

Think I'll go with the kellymom view - especially as that study reckons chocolate is a possible no-no

Self-report of colic and colic's putative causes is massively subject to error - the study linked to is interesting for the way it shows a great long list of stuff and links it to colic. There is no way this is scientific - with 15 foods on the list, it would be amazing if linked colic symptoms were not found in these babies. Babies have colic symoptoms - all babies have them at some time, and if you are asking mothers to look for them, you are sure as hell gonna find loads.

You could have done another list, with, say, 15 colours of hat worn in the week of the questionnaire, and found colic symptoms linked with the colour blue, or green, or purple....

The only scientific way of doing this is to objectively observe symptoms with the possible trigger, then remove the trigger, and observe for absence of symptoms.

Yes, tiktok, that was exactly my problem with that study too.

What's your own experience of this one, out of interest? In the line of your BF counselling work?

Lentil soup - DON'T DO IT! Poor child had reflux after that one. My Midwife told me to avoid 'gassy' foods (beans, cabbage, cauliflower...).

Immaculada - my experience is that mothers try very hard to see a reason for their baby's discomfort and crying. So they will blame whatever they had to eat or drink in the past 24 hours or so.

There is no physical reason why lentil soup or cauliflower or broccoli should affect the milk. How does the gassy stuff get into the milk? It doesn't. It's gassy for us, because the gassy components of these items stick around in the gut and take harder work to digest. They don't migrate to the breastmilk. There is no mechanism by which they can do this.

But there is a lot we don't know about the body. All I can say is the evidence is that we do not need to blame any one food in general. Something that may appear to affect one baby does not affect another.

Midwives who say don't eat x, y or z are making life harder for bf mothers and not using evidence to inform their practice.

my dd got nappy rash when treated myself to a very rare glass of cider when I was breastfeeding. Turns out she is allegic to apples.

I don't know the ins and outs of how breast milk is formed, but if eating lots of beetroot can make your wee turn pink, then it is entirely possible that compounds in foods can affect breastmilk.

But who really, is going to be willing to experiment on their babies to see if certain things are bad for them? A scientifically sound study would be unethical.

the following article discusses how cows milk proteins have been found in breast milk of women who have ingested cows milk...

article

Indeed - some components do reach the breastmilk. Flavours and colours, for instance (breastmilk can be greenish after certain vit supps, apparently). Cows milk proteins get in, too. None of this causes the least problem to most babies.

But the gassy components of breastmilk don't get in - or at least I can't see how they do. They are gassy 'cos they hang about in the gut...at least that's my understanding.

Yes, given that my understanding of gassiness is related to the fibrous nature of the foods mentioned and yet fibre isn't contained in breast milk, I was struggling to understand why my eating such things would affect my baby's digestion. I'm very pleased if they don't!

Chocolate, I believe contains substances that enter the bloodstream (theobromine, caffeine) so I imagine that COULD affect some babies via breast milk..?

Have others noted any effects on their DCs after taking in caffeine?

"(breastmilk can be greenish after certain vit supps, apparently)."
My milk turned green after being on a morphine drip in hospital...really strange colour

I was told (in another country) to avoid dark coloured vegs and red meat in the first few days after birth as it can aggravate jaundice. apparently the colour is broken down by the liver, which is busy building new blood cells for baby just after birth. I now sure how much of it is true though.

dc 1 = I could eat drink what I want, no difference
dc2 = can*t have more than one cup of tea a day or it will be very late nights...