how many calories should i be getting a day and what types of foods are best? I have now thanks to the thread learnt i need more protein and i already know little or no caffine is best but what else?
The general idea is that your body actually prioritizes your milk-making over its other needs - so if you have a lousy diet then you will feel worse than if you ate well, but you will still made adequate milk for your babies. Supply for babies is mostly dictated by sucking now.
The extra calorie requirements are typically not huge - but they seem to vary a lot from person to person. I was feeding one baby and eating lots of food + some junk, and still losing weight. As long as you are not losing weight too quickly you should be fine.
Kmn is right. Basically, all most mothers need to do is to eat a healthy diet. The general wisdom is that if you are exclusively breastfeeding you will need about 300-500 calories extra to what you were eating pre-pregnancy (during pregnancy mothers need another 330 calories anyway.) The other thread suggested 30g of protein per meal - most women on an Australian diet would find that *very* easy to do - our diets tend to be high in protein anyway. other things to take into consideration are the levels of your fat stores in pregnancy - your body will burn these up and for most women that's a good thing! And levels of physical activity
If you wanted to monitor it better you could use the Calorie King website not as a weight loss tool but just something to get you into the groove of monitoring your protein intakes etc. If you find your protein intake is on the lower side there are heaps of different protein drinks out there - some better than others but you will feel alot better generally if the protein intake is adequate.
Seriously - you don't need to load the protein to breastfeed. Just a normal diet. Nothing special. Follow your taste and your appetite. as I said on another thread you can breastfeed on a coke and a tim tam if you want (you will feel like heck but your milk will be just fine)
feeding twins
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks