One of my strongest memories about the final days of my pregnancy is eating anything I wanted. I'd been doing my best to eat a balanced diet for the prior nine months, and I felt a huge sense of freedom knowing that I couldn't really mess my son up too much at that point by cutting lose. I ate tons of Ben and Jerry's Chubby Hubby, which we'd bought in bulk after getting some bad information that they were discontinuing the flavor.
And then came breastfeeding, and for some reason I just threw everything out the window when it came to my diet, especially in the first few months. Actually, I do know why it happened: a combination of postpartum depression, the unending pans of brownies from friends, and the fact that I seemed to be able to eat anything and still lose weight. It got so bad at one point that I told my husband to ask our pediatrician, casually, if I could hurt the baby by eating a lot of brownies.
So, I thought it was pretty interesting that the USDA released its first food pyramids for pregnant and breastfeeding mothers this week. They also have a pyramid for mothers who are trying to lose weight while breastfeeding.
In general I think that this is a wonderful idea. There is so much conflicting information on nutrition and diet out there, so it's nice to have a balanced, presumably evidence-based, standard for good diet while pregnant and nursing.
One glitch with this pyramid is that it won't accept a baby's age if it's older than one year. In fact, it only really works if the baby hasn't started solids, since the only options you can enter are exclusive breastfeeding, mostly breastfeeding, and mostly formula feeding. I'm also uncomfortable with the statement, "the Dietary Guidelines recommend that breastfeeding women not drink alcoholic beverages," since alcohol intake in moderation is generally considered safe.
Another nagging thought I have is that publicizing standards for healthy eating while nursing might deter some mothers from choosing breastfeeding. Research has shown that some women choose not to breastfeed because they believe that there are too many 'rules' about what you can and can't eat. So, talking about this does make me cringe just a little.
In case you're wondering, the truth is that the quality of a mother's diet doesn't have much influence on the quality of her milk (one exception would be that vegans need a source of B-12). Milk samples taken from well nourished and nearly malnourished mothers have been shown to be nearly identical. Your body takes what it needs from your nutritional stores to make great milk for your baby. If your diet isn't balanced you're the one who suffers, from things like low energy and increased susceptibility to things like colds (because your immune systems is weakened).
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