Foods to Help with Breastfeeding

Jul 20, 2018

Breastfeeding and Our Bodies

Have you ever stopped to think just how amazing our bodies truly are?! Our bodies GROW and NOURISH a new life for just over nine months. When the time is right, our babies come to us. After the newborn baby enters the world and is placed on Mama’s tummy, the baby is able to independently find the mother’s breast and decide when to take the first feed. This is called the breast crawl. Our bodies innately grow babies, our babies innately know how to find the breast, AND then our bodies make milk JUST for those babies. Our bodies and our babies work together to change that milk composition based on the babies’ needs over time. How AMAZING is that?!

As many of you know, I am nursing my second baby while eating the Medical Medium way! My diet is heavy on leafy greens, veggies, FRUIT, avocados (did you know they are the closest thing to mama’s milk in terms of nutrients?), potatoes, squashes, and Vimergy Barley Grass Juice Powder. I’m also loving pumpkin seeds, hemp seeds, and red raspberry leaf tea.

Fruit alone is SO important while pregnant and nursing. My Mama clients often tell me they crave sugar, candy, chocolate while nursing. These Mamas simply need more fruit in their diets.

Carbs are your ALLY!

Breast milk is essentially sugar water. It’s very low fat and contains very little protein. It has a high carbohydrate and sugar content. (Thank you for sharing this Medical Medium!) This unique composition is enough to take our babies from teeny tiny to adorable chubby little ones in just a few weeks’ time. The contents of breast milk cannot be duplicated or found anywhere else.

In order to understand the foods that aid in breast milk supply, we must first understand the makeup of breast milk itself. Breast milk is mostly sugar and on average it only has 1 to 1.5% protein… The reason breast milk is so high in sugar is for the baby’s development and growth. Surprised? Yes, baby’s development and growth. The glucose needs to be very high in order to develop the brain of the baby. The baby needs more carbohydrates than anything else in order to grow and develop properly… Women are told to eat more protein and more fat, but too much protein and fat will actually decrease your supply of breast milk. High protein, low carb diets are actually bad for breast milk production and bad for babies… It is essential to focus on the good carbohydrates while pregnant and breastfeeding.

Sugar, while it may sound like an enemy to avoid because of our conditioning, actually runs every single cell in our body, especially our brain. It’s just a matter of having the right kind of sugar that’s found in fresh fruits and high-carbohydrate vegetables like potatoes, sweet potatoes, and winter squashes. You might have heard that the brain is made up mostly of fat. This is a trendy theory that is popular today, but also inaccurate. In truth, the brain is made of stored glycogen, which is primarily glucose.

—Anthony William, Medical Medium

Breast milk alone can nourish a baby for an entire year which is a great example of how we are meant to thrive on glucose, as the first year is full of critical development.

6 Key Foods to Help with Breastfeeding

So what are my favorite foods to help breastfeeding moms support their bodies during this critical time? If you are following the Medical Medium protocol, you are already on the right track, however, certain foods will especially help increase breast milk and offer a ton of other health benefits. Here is some information from Medical Medium that has helped make my mom journey an easier one and can help all you nursing mothers too.

1. Potatoes

Focus on potatoes, especially non-sweet potatoes, like russet and Yukon gold.
The entire potato, inside and out, is valuable and beneficial for your health: potato plants draw some of the highest concentration of macro and trace minerals from the earth.
Potatoes are also high in potassium and rich in vitamin B6, as well as a fantastic source of amino acids, especially lysine in its bioactive form.
Many women have success with increasing breast milk supply by increasing the amount of potatoes in their diets!
Further, potatoes are brain food that helps keep you grounded and centered. What mama doesn’t need this while up all hours feeding her sweet baby?
Potatoes offer us foundation and strength when we’re feeling blurred, dizzy, foggy, troubled, or adrift in our lives. “If your ego is consuming you, potatoes can tap into the humble confidence within, overriding the toxic emotions that keep you from succeeding in the areas of life that truly matter. Potatoes reorient us, help us to feel pleased and gratified by our experiences, and guide us to make choices not based on ego but out of true grounding and stability.”

2. Avocados

Due to its nutritional profile, the avocado is one of the closest foods to mother’s breast milk, being a complete and easily assimilable food with protein ratios that are equal to breast milk.
The avocado is truly one of the world’s most perfect foods. It is easily digested and contains over 25 essential nutrients including iron, copper, magnesium, and essential fatty acids that help the body to function optimally.
Avocados increase the body’s ability to assimilate nutrients, so they are a wonderful addition to leafy green salads to ensure proper absorption of all the vitamins and minerals.
They are also an excellent source of glutathione which helps to boost the immune system, strengthen the heart, rebuild the nervous system, and slow the aging process.

3. Fruit

Craving sweets? Go for the fruit! Fruit contains water, minerals, vitamins, fiber, and antioxidants along with their critical glucose.
Fruit feeds every single one of our bodies’ cells with vitamins, nutrients, minerals, and phytochemicals.
Because fruit digests so easily, fruit sugar leaves your stomach and enters your bloodstream within minutes after being eaten.
Fruit helps to keep us hydrated along with other raw veggies, juices, smoothies, lemon/lime and coconut water.

4. Squashes

Winter Squash is a highly nutritious and alkaline food which rich in phytonutrients and antioxidants.
Squash is wonderfully high in Vitamins A, E, C, B-complex, and beta-carotene, iron, zinc, copper, calcium, and potassium which are vital for a healthy and strong immune and nervous system.
The creamy and comforting qualities of squash can help satisfy a variety of cravings while still properly nourishing the body and soul. The seeds of winter squash are also edible and can be dried or roasted similarly to pumpkin seeds and are rich in protein, vitamins, minerals, and amino acids such as tryptophan which helps to promote a healthy night’s sleep. Again, perfect for a new mother and her baby!

5. Raw Honey

Honey’s highly absorbable sugar and B12 coenzymes make it one of the most powerful brain foods of our time. It also contains Vitamin C as well as minerals such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, and zinc.
Raw honey is not filtered, strained, or heated above 115 degrees Fahrenheit and provides far more benefits than regular honey as it is full of active enzymes, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids that are vital for keeping the body healthy and for preventing illness and disease.
Raw honey promotes restorative sleep and can aid in healing and rebuilding the body during the night. Another perfect food for a sleep-deprived mama!

6. Sprouts and Microgreens

Just like the vegetables they would become if they grew to full size, sprouts and microgreens are packed with nutrients like vitamin A, B vitamins, minerals, trace minerals, disease-reversing compounds, and other phytochemicals.
The most important role that sprouts and microgreens play is to bring back vitality to people who are always exhausting themselves for others (the ultimate definition of a new mother??). When you put your heart and soul into everything you do, whether at home or work, sprouts have the unique ability to support you.
Sprouts and microgreens are wonderful reproductive foods. They are one of the ultimate tools for renewing an exhausted reproductive system and revitalizing a new mom who hasn’t been getting much sleep while caring for her baby.
Sprouts and microgreens are phytoestrogenic and critical for rebalancing and restoring hormones such as progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone, and for regenerating hormone production of the adrenal glands, thyroid, and the rest of the endocrine system after a woman has given birth.

If you include these foods, your baby and your milk supply will thank you! Additionally, if you are going to eat grains, enjoy the highest quality grains like millet and quinoa. If you’re going to eat animal protein, don’t let it completely dominate the diet. Try to make the most room for other healthy options, such as important healthy carbohydrates.

Now that you’ve read about all of these miracle foods, did you know that the body automatically takes the best of the Mother’s diet and pulls it into her milk? So if we eat fruit, and greens, and amazingly healthy foods – our bodies will automatically convert this to breast milk to nourish our baby. A win for both Mama and baby… and what valuable information at such an amazing, yet stressful time of our lives!Kimberly Spair and her children

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