How to Improve the Quality of Your Breast Milk

People often describe breastmilk as the “perfect food for babies”. And that’s true! But the composition of breast milk isn’t fixed; if you’re not getting the nutrients you need, you can’t make them magically appear in your breastmilk. Luckily, you can influence the quality of your breastmilk through your diet and lifestyle. Here are our top tips for how to boost breastmilk quality.

How Do I Know if My Breast Milk is Good Quality or Not? 

Many new mothers do not get adequate breastfeeding support or education. Many are left in the dark beyond latching and infant weight gain and loss. So you may not be aware of breastmilk quality, nutritional composition, and how to meet your baby's needs during this critical period. 

Factors that Affect Breast Milk Quality

A few ways to tell you are producing quality milk:

• Color: Check the color of your breastmilk to monitor its quality. It’s normal for mature breastmilk to have a whitish hue, with a light blue or yellow tinge. If your breastmilk is consistently reddish or bright pink, that could indicate an underlying issue, and you should contact your healthcare provider.
• Texture: Your breastmilk should have a consistency of water, or can be slightly thicker or creamier. Clumpy breastmilk could indicate an underlying issue.
• Taste: Breast milk should have a slightly sweet taste
  

The color, texture, smell and taste of breastmilk aren’t consistent for every woman, and it can change based on many factors while still being healthy for your baby. Just make sure you’re regularly monitoring your breastmilk so you can note any changes or concerns.

7 Tips for How to Improve Breast Milk Quality

Breastfeeding is incredibly nutritionally depleting, and with some nutrients, your health may suffer if you don’t get an adequate amount in your diet. For example, if you don’t consume enough calcium, your breastmilk will “pull” it from your nutritional stores to make up the difference. In other words, if you’re not regularly getting enough calcium, you may end up with compromised bone density as the baby takes from the stores of Calcium in your bones. Below are seven tips to reinforce optimal nutrition and enhance breastmilk.

1. Eat a Nutrient-Dense Diet 

Your diet and nutrient stores may impact the nutritional content of breastmilk. While certain nutrients will be present regardless of dietary intake, many others will only be present if you consume them. Yes, this means that breastmilk can actually be deficient in nutrients.

To be clear, this is NOT to suggest that you should ever stop breastfeeding out of fear for breast milk quality! This information empowers you to support the nutritional content of your breastmilk if you want to. Even if a mother’s diet isn’t “perfect,” her milk is still a superfood containing immune-boosting antibodies, human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) for her baby’s microbiome, easy-to-digest proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, and many trace minerals. Breastmilk also has the amazing ability to adapt to a baby’s needs in the case of illness or infection.

2. Continue a Comprehensive Prenatal Vitamin 

Because nutrient content in breastmilk varies, a comprehensive prenatal vitamin can help ensure that you’re meeting your and your baby's needs. Postpartum can be a busy and overwhelming season, and trying to meet all of your needs through diet while adjusting to the dynamics of caring for a newborn baby can be challenging.

Some of the nutrients to consider while breastfeeding:

Vitamin A

Vitamin A supports a strong immune system, brain, and vision development. Postpartum mothers can also benefit from Vitamin A supplementation to boost thyroid function. Excess Vitamin A intake can lead to nausea, dizziness, blurred vision, and issues with muscle function.

B Vitamins (especially B12)

The B vitamins (B1, B2, B3, B9, B12, etc.) have a wide range of health benefits; they help with energy, the production of red blood cells, and support skin and eye health. Vitamin B12 is especially critical because it works alongside folate to help your baby’s cells and tissues grow and function. 

Vitamin C

Besides supporting a healthy immune system, vitamin C helps with iron absorption. Vitamin C promotes healthy skin and connective tissue by stabilizing collagen messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA). The collagen MRNA directs the body to produce collagen.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D is essential for you and your baby. For babies, vitamin D supports the development of the immune system and promotes healthy bones and teeth. 

Choline

Choline is an essential nutrient, playing a critical role in brain development, liver function and metabolism. Despite the importance of Choline, studies show that as many as 90% of people do not get the daily recommended intake.

3. Keep Up Your Omega-3 Fatty Acids

Omega-3 fatty acids like DHA are essential for infant brain development. In fact, research has shown that infants of mothers with high DHA levels in their breastmilk have better neural and visual development. However, the concentration of DHA in breastmilk varies significantly and depends on your diet.

4. Limit Unhealthy Fats

Fat is absolutely essential for a baby’s development, and the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins is necessary for just about every other aspect of physical and cognitive development. It’s a good idea to include a healthy fat in every meal and snack for your milk and to help manage your blood sugar and breastfeeding hunger. Good sources include nuts and seeds and their butters (almonds, walnuts, flax, chia, sunflower, pumpkin), coconut and olive oils, avocado, egg yolks, full-fat grass-fed dairy, and grass-fed butter or ghee.

Limit the consumption of fried foods and trans fats.

5. Avoid Household Toxins

Our world is full of toxins, from environmental pollution to chemicals in our cleaning products, makeup, personal care products, fabrics, food containers, and more. One study of breastfeeding mothers analyzed per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in breastmilk. Every sample tested positive for PFAS, with levels ranging from 52 parts per trillion(ppt) to more than 500 ppt. Exposure to PFAS is an ongoing concern, with research still uncovering the health implications. 

6. Take a Targeted Probiotic

Breastmilk is inherently rich in probiotics and prebiotics. Many researchers even refer to this as the milk microbiome. Research also suggests that you can further enhance your quality through probiotic supplementation and that bacteria present in the maternal gut could reach the mammary gland during late pregnancy and lactation.

The Needed Prenatal Pre/Probiotic contains several highly-targeted strains of good bacteria for a thriving gut microbiome.

7. Drink Plenty of Water

If you aren’t producing enough breast milk, water can help. Research shows that low water intake increases the risk of dehydration, decreased milk production, and fatigue in breastfeeding mothers. 

You’re Doing a Great Job

There are already so many things on our minds in postpartum, so these tips aren’t meant to increase pressure or instill feelings of mom guilt. Instead, they are intended to educate and empower you, to be helpful and actionable, and to meet you where you are so that you can make whatever small changes resonate with you. Breastfeeding can be depleting, so ensure you get optimal nutrition to support your and your baby’s needs.