Evidence-based info for the thinking parent
While over half of mothers in the U.S. drink alcohol while breastfeeding, many of us are foggy on how this does (or does not) affect our babies.
Can you drink a glass of wine while breastfeeding your baby? Or do you need you wait 2-3 hours for the alcohol to clear? And exactly how much alcohol is too much alcohol to nurse?
Doctors and trusted sources like KellyMom and Babycenter give wildly conflicting advice on these points.
Breastfeeding and not losing any weight? The evidence suggests you are not alone.
Breastfeeding melts off the baby weight, right? Breastfeeding leads to an “earlier return to prepregnancy weight,” according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
This is because “breastfeeding burns extra calories, so it can help you lose pregnancy weight faster,” as many popular websites, like WebMd claim.
Sounds pretty clear cut, right?
So when I failed to lose weight while breastfeeding my first child, I was shocked. Weren’t those pregnancy pounds supposed to be falling off? Why were my pre-pregnancy jeans still collecting dust in the back of my closet?
Breastfeeding an infant does burn an average of 480 calories a day. So why wasn’t I losing more weight?
But like so many other alleged benefits of breastfeeding, breastfeeding-aided weight loss turns out to be vastly overblown.
In other words, my experience was completely normal. For most well-nourished women, long-term breastfeeding results in only a trivial amount of extra weight loss by 6 months postpartum, usually only of 1-2 lbs.
Continue reading “Don’t Count on Breastfeeding to Help You Shed Your Baby Weight”
