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Maternal Diet & Breast Milk Quality |
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| QUESTION: | | My Mother-in-Law says that if I, the mother, am on a poor diet, it is pointless to breastfeed the baby, as the baby will not be able to absorb any nutrients from me. How true is it? |
| | ANSWER: | | It is, of course, good for a breastfeeding mother to eat a well-balanced diet. Most of our population in Singapore eat sufficiently even if they are not always balanced in their diet. Baby always gets the BEST from mother. Mother has stores of nutrients in her body, and these are tapped for baby. If your diet is insufficient in calcium, your milk will draw calcium from your teeth first for baby. So, even if your diet is less than perfect, the milk you produce is still baby's best food. Should your diet be deficient, you are more likely to be tired and have less resistance to illnesses, so for these reasons too, you must eat as well as you can. Only mothers in very poor populations where her diet is perennially poor and deficient will both mother and child be really threatened. But then, in such a situation, this mother will certainly not be able to afford artificial feeding. |
| | Please note that this information is for personal use only and is provided based on the limited information from your email. It is private and confidential and is provided by volunteer counsellors, who are not medical professionals but have breastfed their children. Please do not distribute or disseminate to third parties or alter the information. It is the property of the Breastfeeding Mothers' Support Group (Singapore). If you are in doubt or have any difficulty, please consult a lactation consultant or a health professional with an interest in breastfeeding. |
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