Fat content of breast milk

A woman who nurses a baby begins to think about how to improve the fat content of breast milk if her child does not gain enough weight or needs to be more often applied to the breast. Conversely, a doctor can call the mother's dysbacteriosis and digestive disorders a cause of too much breast milk.

What fat content of breast milk is normal?

Normally 100 ml of breast milk should contain 4.2 g of fat, 1.3 g of protein, 7 g of carbohydrates, its caloric value is 280 KJ. Fat milk with breastfeeding or not - it does not always depend on the nutrition of the woman. It often happens that with a high-calorie diet, the mother adds weight, and the child may fall behind. When feeding the baby, low-fat breast milk is first consumed, which is 90% water (front), and then more caloric and nutritious milk (rear), which is more fatty.

If a woman feeds her baby, often changing her breasts and the remains of milk from them decant, then the child receives less caloric nutrition than when feeding only one breast until it is completely emptied. But the alternation of breasts during feeding is the way how you can reduce the fat content of breast milk, if necessary. But, first of all, the fat content of a woman's breast milk is genetically incorporated and depends on heredity.

Increased fat content of breast milk

Before taking measures to ensure that breast milk is fatter, a woman needs to make sure that the child is not gaining weight badly because of other reasons. It is necessary to adhere to simple rules when feeding a child: to check if the baby is correctly grasping the breast, giving one breast for one feeding, and the second - only if there is not enough of the first, to try not to change the breast frequently during feeding.

To increase the calorie content of milk, a woman can recommend a special diet. In the diet should be present foods that increase the fat content of breast milk: at least half of the total nutrition should be fresh vegetables and fruits, as well as cereals. Products that affect the caloric content of milk and contribute to its production are walnuts, halva, broccoli. To provide not only calorie, but also the need for calcium, cheese, butter and milk are added to the diet. Increase the fat content of milk contribute to beans, fish, carrots, raisins, cabbage, meat of different varieties, preferably white and boiled.

Check at home how fatty milk the mother can be by this method: put in a test tube at a height of 10 cm of breast milk and leave upright for 6-7 hours at normal room temperature. Over milk forms a thicker layer of yellow cream, the thickness of which is measured. Each millimeter of the height of the cream layer corresponds to one% of the fat content of milk, and the height of the layer in millimeters is the fat content of milk in%.

How to lower the fat content of breast milk?

If the child adds weight too quickly - not always the reason lies in the fat content of the milk. Most often, the causes of heredity, diseases associated with metabolic disorders, low motor activity. But too fatty milk can cause not only obesity, but dysbiosis. If, after all, a home test has shown that breast milk is too fatty, the question arises: what to do. If the child normally gaining weight, and there are no digestion disorders, then do nothing especially. But if the doctor recommended reducing the caloric intake of the baby's nutrition, then it is necessary to start with reducing the caloric content of lures and the abolition of night feeding. And to reduce the fat content of milk can be recommended to reduce the use of mother carbohydrates.