Coffee is the drink that begins in the morning for many people. The desire to cheer up is more relevant than ever for a young mother who has a day to worry about. However, drinking coffee while breastfeeding is always in doubt. It’s believed that the best diet for a nursing mother is proper nutrition, and coffee is usually excluded from the list of allowed products.
How caffeine affects a baby
Why are young mothers trying not to drink coffee? This is mainly due to prejudices regarding caffeine, which is part of the aromatic invigorating drink. Moms are afraid that caffeine will have a negative effect on the baby. The most popular “horror story” - the child will become nervous, restless, will sleep poorly and develop with a lag.
In fact, caffeine is not really good for an infant, but for another reason: the infant body is not able to absorb and excrete it. Accumulating in the baby’s body, caffeine can really have a harmful effect, but this is only possible with regular use of coffee in decent volumes.
The rest of the nursing mother may not be afraid of caffeine. In addition to coffee, it is also found in other products: chocolate of any kind, cocoa, black and green tea. By the way, green tea contains more caffeine than coffee, and, nevertheless, breastfeeding is not a reason for refusing it.
Like any new product, coffee can provoke an allergic reaction in the baby. You need to monitor the appearance of the reaction in the first hours after feeding with "coffee" milk.
How to choose coffee for a nursing mom
Of course, coffee for a nursing mother should only be natural, preferably brewed from freshly ground beans. But drinking instant coffee is not recommended. Such coffee is made from lower grains, contains a lot of caffeine and is chemically processed. Allergies and dangerous consequences in this case are more likely than after a cup of natural drink.
The so-called decaffeinated coffee. The very formulation of the name of the drink is misleading: there can be no decaffeinated coffee. In fact, this is coffee with a low caffeine content, that is, to completely eliminate the ingress of caffeine into the body of the crumbs still does not work. By the degree of harm, such coffee is akin to soluble, since it also undergoes chemical processing.
Coffee for breastfeeding - the main rules
If a young mother does not say coffee decisively “no,” it is not superfluous to take note of some rules, the implementation of which will help minimize the consequences of “coffee” milk for the baby.
- Only drink brewed coffee made from beans.
- To reduce the caffeine content in a drink, you can not brew coffee, but pour boiling water over it and let it brew.
- Coffee is safe for moderate use.For example, one cup for several days, well, or once a day.
- If you drink coffee, then it is better to do it in the morning, and regarding feeding - immediately after feeding, so that by the next application the concentration of caffeine in milk is already lower.
- When using coffee, reduce your intake of other caffeinated foods.
- Be sure to increase the intake of foods containing calcium (cheese, cottage cheese, kefir). Nursing mothers always suffer from a lack of calcium, and coffee additionally contributes to its excretion from the body.
- Do not forget to drink an additional cup of clean water for each cup of coffee you drink: caffeine causes dehydration, and it is very important for a nursing mother to maintain fluid balance.
Refusing coffee altogether or ignoring warnings are extremes. The best option, as usual, is somewhere in between. Even a nursing mother can pamper herself with her favorite drink without harm to the baby.
We read more about the nutrition of a nursing mother:
- Grocery list in the menu of a nursing mother (what can I eat)
- So what you can not eat (and what is generally contraindicated in the period of hepatitis B)
If it’s so hard for mom to give up coffee while breastfeeding, then she herself seems to have problems with caffeine dependence.
But how then to drink green tea? He then enters into a healthy diet.
The first six months of breastfeeding, I did not drink coffee, and diluted the weak, herbal tea with milk. Then in the mornings after feeding she drank only one cup of coffee, after a year - two. I was breastfeeding for almost fifteen months; coffee did not affect my daughter’s health in any way.
I always drank coffee, even during pregnancy, the notorious cup was drunk in the mornings, although closer to childbirth, the desire to drink a cup fell away - there was just one more mug on the floor. Both boys ate my “coffee” milk almost from the first days of life and did not observe any changes in their development. There was not even hyperactivity.
For me, the main thing is to use everything but in moderation, without fanaticism. And again, both sons never suffered from any allergies.