For years, I have railed against telling mothers they must eat a "good"
diet in order to breastfeed.

When one gets right down to it, caloric intake is what is "essential".
Most all foods (except water) have calories.  Now, in the late 20th
century, we have learned that there are "empty" calories and other kinds,
and all about vitamins and minerals, which was basically unknown until the
mid-20th century.  THink about all the information we are given when
pregnant about WHICH vitamins and minerals we need and then consider how
people survived when they knew nothing about same and still managed to
continue living.  Might what saved them simply be that they tended to eat a
variety of foods, containing varying amounts of calories and (yes!)
vitamins and minerals, too? and that most of those foods were in close to
their naturally-occurring state rather than highly processed or rendered
practically artificial with numerous things taken out, or added?

Many many women (I recall their faces still from my days at a WIC office)
were frightened to death to breastfeed.  Why?  Becuase in order to qualify,
they had to be identified as "nutritionally at risk." Most all of them
(regardless of what their chart said) interpreted that to mean that they
"didn't eat RIGHT."  Obviously, then, their milk would also be BAD and
thus, they opted to give their babies formulas (which meant, when I asked
them, that some doctor had CREATED it with things in it to protect their
babies from disease.  Many actually thought that a formula had IMMUNITIES
to disease in it!

After laughing in the back room until we were done crying, we rolled up our
sleeves and got busy trying to help these mothers understand that their
milk was just fine for their babies--regardless of the "nutritional risk"
these mothers were defined as having in order to get them on to WIC.

When we persist in telling other women that they must "eat right" in order
to breastfeed, we are simply placing another HUGE barrier (how many of us
really believe we ALWAYS eat exactly right?) for mothers to attempt to
climb (if not physically, then psychologically).

Enough of my rant......

I know who I think was originally behind this notion, but I will keep my
mouth SHUT!

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"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly
disguised as impossible situations."
Kathleen G. Auerbach,PhD, IBCLC (Ferndale, WA USA) [log in to unmask]
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