What to eat while breastfeeding

[UdderFixation]

I'm exclusively breastfeeding my 10 week old twins, which is going quite well so far even if it is totally exhausting! However, I'm not sure what's best for me to eat - any tips?

I'd also be interested in anything NOT to eat - I've found a few things that have a bad effect on the boys (=explosive poos!) although I haven't quite worked out how long it takes for anything "bad" to reach breastmilk. If I have something they don't like for dinner could it affect the next night's sleep? Or will the effects be gone by then?

I just avoided curry and spicy food. Fennel tea is meant to help with supply. I mostly ate cake which i probably wouldn't recommend but it did help! I think lots of protein snacks would be best so breakfast lunch dinner then maybe hummus, nuts (and cake) in between!

PS Well done!!!!!!!

BF made me massively crave calories of the naughty kind!

However as long as you are eating a good diet - think lots of protein, pulses, green leafy veg, fruit etc then some additional sugary snacks are not going to hurt!

Fennel tea and oats are good for boosting milk supply - porridge for breakfast! Lots and lots of water too, you will get thirsty.

I used to find that I was often stuck in bed in the morning doing moster feeds and so ended up with late breakfast, so I kept a store of cereal bars in my bedside drawer so I could stave of the hunger for a while.

I never managed to find a significant relationship between what I ate and symptoms in the kids (though they were both colicky). I didn't avoid curry

monster feeds

porridge!
oats are supposedly good for milk production, but even if that's an old wife's tale its a really good way to fill up your tum for quite a while.
I have heard that you shouldn't change your diet significantly from what you had during pregnancy, suddenly having tonnes of spicey food if you didn't before for example, I think it was that wht you ate had an effect on the taste of the amniotic fluid and your milk so if it suddenly changes it might cause problems. can't remember where I read that though, it might well be nonsense!
Even malnourished women can produce good nutritious milk for their babies, your baby will take the calcium from your bones for example if you don't consume enough - so you're not eating for your babies, but you have to make sure you have enough for you!

There isn't anything that I can't eat, including all those things that seem to affect others, but that could be because I have always eaten lots of spicy foods/had a coffee/a glass of wine etc.

But what you do need to eat is plenty of cake and chocolate and also lots and lots and lots of good healthy food that makes you feel good.

It won't affect your milk but you will feel a lot more up to everything.

Hi and big double congrats
iv read you should avoid cabbage, oranges and onions for colic and indigestion. Also drink camomile tea to relax them in the evening and peppermint and ginger teas are good for their tum's too.

I did once have an awful night with an amazingly windy dd after I had baked beans for tea whilst bf.
So I would stay away from the baked beans!

I've always been able to eat anything at all but have tried to eat a good supply of calcium rich food forbmy benefit. I had to follow a low fat diet when feeding dd1 as had gallstones and she thrived. I missed the cake though

Cake!

Congratulations and HUGE respect to you for ExBFing twins!

Well done, exbfing teeny twins, what an acheivement!

I feel I ought to be advising you to eat plenty of wholesome carby foods, low fat protein and plenty of fruit and veg.

But I won't.

I shall recommend cake and chocolate.

I think it's trial and error as to what has an effect on your babies - and I think that expoding poos may not be caused by what you eat. Are they both doing explody poos at roughly the same time? I know some people found that dairy and/or caffeine and/or spicy food had this effect on their babies.

You also need to make sure you drink plenty of fluids.

Congratulations and keep up the good work

Well done - it is exhausting. I just stopped having caffeinated drinks and ate whatever I liked; I don't think anything has affected DS that I could tell.

I found packets of oatcakes were brilliant for snacking on during night feeds in the early days. Now I have a big bowl of porridge before I go to bed and another when I wake up, which definitely helps - although that's more because of being up in the night than the bf.

Hello fellow twin mum, well done!

I was never too concerned about diet but in the early days I avoided overly spicy food, by a few months the curries and glasses of wine crept back in! Also I used to be starving, and had to eat often but things have calmed down, I guess the body adjusts and I have now reverted to pre-pregnancy type of diet.

Obviously as everyone else has said - cake!

Cake!

I also had half a tin of Mackeson's Stout in the evening when dd was very young. Of course what you eat doesn't generally matter, but I craved the stuff.

Congratulations on the twins. Everytime I see a woman with twins I am always amazed. I can barely cope with one

"I also had half a tin of Mackeson's Stout in the evening when dd was very young"

When my mum had me my dad was sent out by the midwifes to get some Mackeson's for my mum to have in hospital (this was only in 1981 btw, not eons ago!)

Thanks everyone! So, cake it is. Will have to get handy with the mixer, as cakes in Hong Kong are not quite what I would call cake...I am also getting a regular supply of British Dairy Milk, which I couldn't live without! The boys must get to know the taste of home after all

AngelDog, I like the porridge before bed idea - maybe that'll help my husband too!

Everyone asks me how I cope with twins (I don't have the answer to that) but no one asks my husband how he copes with an emotional wife, two 10 week olds who are nowhere near sleeping through the night, AND a full time job. At least I get to sit on the sofa watching The Hotel Inspector and other similarly edifying trash on BBC Lifestyle!

I'm going to second cutting out the caffiene, once I did this with DS the colic stopped.

I'll second lots of cake too. They recommend having 500 extra calories a day when bfing one baby but I've always thought this was a typo and they missed an extra 0 off the end.

Congratulations, sounds like you are doing brilliantly.

The only thing that affected my DS was broccoli, which is a shame as I love it! Also had MAJOR hunger, particularly in the first 6 months. Now calming down a bit.

Babies have explosive poos and it is not connected to your diet. That is just what a lot of bf poos are are like.

Eat what you like within reason for your own health. Unless there is a certain history of allergies within the family, avoiding certain types of foods is irrelevant.

Eat anything you like! Avoiding things is old wives' stuff. My MIL goes on and on about how lettuce gave DH colic - where do they get it from? I take great delight in munching lettuce every chnace I get just to wind her up! Your milk comes through your blood stream not directly from your gut. What you eat may change the taste a bit but has no affect on a baby's digestive system. Ditto the odd glass of wine!

I think a lot of this stuff is pure coincidence, babies poo a lot and it is explosive from time to time!

Eat well for yourself though as this is a tiring time - and congratulations! My sister has twins and they're delightful - she can hardly get down the street for people cooing over them!