Breastfeeding by vegetarian mothers
You can breast-feed healthily on a vegetarian diet. You can even breast-feed on a vegan diet - after all, cows don't drink milk. If you are breast-feeding, try to keep to a similar diet to that which you had during pregnancy. Any deficiencies in your diet will not affect your milk, as the milk production has first call on the nutrition the mother takes in, but what will happen is that you will lose out. The only exception is that if your diet is very lacking in fat, your milk may be low in fat. In fact, as a vegetarian, your milk will actually be better than that of meat-eaters. According to John Robbins in Diet for a New America, 99 per cent of U.S. mothers' milk contains significant levels of DDT, as against only 8 per cent of vegetarian mothers' milk. There are many reasons to breast-feed. Two of the more well-known facts are that mothers' milk is the perfect food for babies, and that it provides antibodies to help prevent your baby from getting ill, and to help her recover more quickly if she does catch an illness.Some reasons, however, are less well publicised:
- Mothers' milk is unique, created specially for your baby, and evolving as she grows, to meet her changing needs.
- A nursing mother produces a hormone called prolactin, which helps her to bond with her baby, and which is a natural sedative, keeping her calm during the often stressful time of a new baby. (Not that we are for a minute suggesting that only nursing mothers can bond with their babies, but prolactin is nature's way of helping.)
- Breast-fed babies also suffer less cot death, meningitis, and leukaemia, and on a less serious note, they suffer less nappy-rash, wind and colic.
- Breast-fed babies have better jaw development (because they have to work to breast-feed) and this leads to them having less speech problems and fewer orthodontic troubles in later life.
- Women who breast-feed suffer a lower incidence of breast and ovarian cancers.
- Breast-feeding will help you regain your figure, both because it encourages quicker contraction of the uterus to pre-pregnancy size, and because it uses so many calories (between 400 and 600 calories a day).
- Breast-feeding women get their periods back much later than other women, and this can act as a contraceptive (however, read more
