Foods to avoid while breastfeeding?

[LeeLou456]

I'm 36+5 and very excited about meeting our lo soon!

I'm hoping to breastfeed and was just wondering what foods to avoid? The one food I've missed during pregnancy is prawns however a relative of mine mentioned that I shouldn't eat them while breastfeeding either . Does anyone know if prawns are ok?! and is there anything I really should avoid?

Thanks in advance

Totally understand PPs saying there's nothing to avoid but it seemed whenever I ate loads of garlic DD would have raging wind! Probably a coincidence tho

Depends if the baby is intolerant to anything. I had to avoid loads of things - but it’s not a common thing! Otherwise nothing, even alcohol is fine

No foods to avoid as far as I know, although I found that grapefruits and grapefruit juice seemed to give my DS1 colic type pains about 24 hours later.

I ate a shed load of prawns when i was pregnant.

OP: The rule regarding shellfish when pregnant is to with food poisoning. As long as you are sure what you are eating is well cooked and not dodgy then I'd eat it (wouldn't for instance have a prawn curry from a takeaway but would at home).

The only foods you truly need to avoid in pregnancy are liver and fish high in mercury (shark, swordfish, deep sea fish). I believe pate isn't recommended but I'm not sure if that's because of the liver?

I find this is an old wives tale trotted out by people who (wrongly) think breastmilk is insufficient for babies to try to put new mums off. I'm bf baby no 2 and don't avoid any food at all.

You can eat prawns! You can eat anything really unless your baby seems to have a reaction after you've eaten a particular food. My current breastfed baby gets runny poop if I have anything too spicy, but it didn't bother my other bf baby. Things like too much fresh fruit /juice can have the same effect too. The only thing to watch is certain medication isn't suitable for bf, you can't have lemsip etc same as in pregnancy, but you can have ibuprofen.

Oops yes a pp mentioned coffee, I forgot to mention that. Not too much anyway.
If your baby seems to get colicky, try drinking fennel tea, it worked wonders for my baby.

The reason Lemsip is advised against it not because it can harm your baby. It’s because the decongestant, pseudoephedrine, has been shown to have an impact on supply.

Just eat the prawns!!!!

Cabbage and sprouts gave my baby bad wind. Was disappointing as I love both with a Sunday roast....

Surely cabbage and sprouts give the eater wind because of gas produced in your intestines as you digest it - how does that get into your blood supply and then into your milk, into the baby to produce gas again?
Similarly fruit juice can give children runny poos because of the fructose in it, but breast milk doesn't contain fructose.

urely cabbage and sprouts give the eater wind because of gas produced in your intestines as you digest it - how does that get into your blood supply and then into your milk, into the baby to produce gas again?

It doesn't. In that it actually can't.

If your baby seems to get colicky, try drinking fennel tea, it worked wonders for my baby

Only if you give them the fennel tea directly (which you can). There is no fennel tea in your breastmilk after you have drunk it though.

I think people have a vague notion that what you eat or drink somehow flows from your mouth into your breasts, so fizzy drinks would somehow make your milk fizzy, or curry will flavour the milk. But milk is made from proteins, fats and sugars from your blood. It doesn't contain the flavours or nature of what you eat and drink.

In trying to be healthy but also. combat being starving all the time when breastfeeding ds1 I ate mountains of fruit, specifically dried dates I seem to remember. My god it gave the poor boy nappy rash!

I eat and drink whatever I want. Including wine.

I'll never understand the nhs advice on alcohol and breastfeeding when anti reflux medication for babies contains alcohol.

Some medications, excessive alcohol and excessive caffeine. But that's it.

If baby has cow's milk intolerance then you may have to cut out dairy.

I've successfully fed for 2 years, I could not have kept going if I'd had to stop eating certain foods!

Frogz, it's more about your safety to breastfeed if drunk!

peppa curry DEFINITELY flavours the milk. And your amniotic fluid! I eat loads of curry and my milk has a definite tang to it, whereas when I'm dieting it doesn't.

peppa

I agree with virtually all that you say but it has in fact been proven that the mother’s diet changes the flavour of breast milk. It is thought that this might be of benefit as bf babies are introduced to a variety of flavours from birth as opposed to the homogeneous of formula.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2452382/Mothers-shown-how-to-produce-flavoured-breast-milk.html

@peppapigwouldmakelovelyrashers how does CMP pass through mothers milk then?

Frogz, it's more about your safety to breastfeed if drunk

But that could apply to all aspects of parenting! I just think it's a shame that many women I know think you have to be tee total.