Moms will always do what’s best for their babies, and that includes looking for ways to improve the quality of their breast milk. While breast milk already contains all the nutrients the baby needs, milk with more fat content has more calories, which is essential for kids to gain weight.
Understanding Breast Milk
Mothers only produce one kind of milk, but it goes through three different stages – colostrum, transitional milk and mature milk.
Colostrum is the milk produced in the first few days after birth. It’s yellowish in color, creamier, and rich in nutrients and immunoglobulins that provide crucial immunity for the baby. Transitional milk follows and has high fat and lactose levels and water-soluble vitamins.
The final type of milk produced is mature milk. It consists of two types – foremilk and hindmilk. Foremilk is what the baby first draws during feeding. It’s usually thin, watery, full of vitamins and protein but low in fat content. Hindmilk appears towards the latter part of the session and is rich in fat content and high in calories.
Tips for Making Breast Milk Fattier
Choose The Fats You Eat Carefully.
Your diet will have little effect on your breast milk, but it will have a significant impact on your health. However, what you eat will also affect your baby, so you need to be careful with regards to your fat intake.
To keep your baby healthy, opt for the monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats found in vegetable oils, fish, nuts and seeds. These types of fat are crucial for the development of your baby’s brain and vision.
Mix up Your Feeding Sessions.
There are two ways to get your baby drinking more of the fattier hindmilk. One is to nurse longer, and the other is to increase feeding sessions. Nursing your baby longer ensures that he or she will get both types of milk.
Some babies don’t like to nurse for a long time so to ensure your child gets more hindmilk, try to keep feeding times close together. Lactation experts also recommend not switching breasts until the baby stops suckling.
Pump It Up.
If you believe that your baby isn’t getting enough fat, use a pump to separate the foremilk from the hindmilk.
Pumping milk out before you feed your baby will ensure that he or she will be drinking more hindmilk. Try to pump out a third of the milk you would usually pump from a full session to remove the foremilk.
Go For a Breast Massage.
Massaging your breasts gives the same effect as when you compress it – hindmilk will go out more quickly. One major difference though is that you can massage your breast before and during breastfeeding sessions while compressions are done only during feeding time. Finding the right way to massage your breast is a process of trial and error. But it’s best to massage it carefully to avoid sore breast.
Take a lecithin supplement.
A lot of moms have discovered that taking a sunflower lecithin supplement is great in making milk richer and fattier. Lecithin helps unclog milk ducts by lessening breast milk’s viscosity and boosting the amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids, making the milk more slippery and easy to express. More importantly, the sunflower lecithin supplement is safe to take and affordable.
It’s important to remember that both foremilk and hindmilk are crucial to a baby’s development. But if you want to ensure that your newborn will be gaining weight, try to make your milk fattier.
References:
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Breast-Milk-More-Nutritious
Jessica Kelley
Jessica is the founder of CareHappiness.com. She and her editor work to inspire, educate and empower our readers with all the latest updates and authentic information. Her goal is to bring up the “Healthy attitude” among people in the world. On CareHappiness.com you will find high-quality health information, fitness tips, diet charts and answer to all your health queries.
