Coffee while breastfeeding: is it possible to drink and what to replace?

Coffee is one of the most popular drinks on our planet. Its incomparable taste and aroma is familiar to each of us. Coffee is able to invigorate in the morning, add efficiency in the middle of the day and sometimes act soothingly at night. There are many varieties and recipes for this amazing drink.

However, both gourmets and physicians still argue about the benefits and harms of coffee. This question is especially acute when an avid coffee lover becomes a nursing mother and can no longer blindly go about her gastronomic tastes. It is worth talking about whether a woman should indulge herself with coffee during lactation and how it can affect the health of the child.

Despite the high popularity of coffee, there are some facts that call into question its benefits. In most breastfeeding guides, coffee is not recommended for use during pregnancy and lactation. Why is it impossible to drink coffee during breastfeeding, because the young mother, like no one else, needs a charge of cheerfulness so that all day long enough power is available to care for the baby? Probably, such restrictions are due to the fact that this drink can be dangerous to the health of the infant. Let's try to understand this issue.

Proved that coffee can increase blood pressure by an average of 10 unitsthat in some cases may be beneficial to a nursing mother. The drink gives vitality and tones, which is also very useful in the first months of the baby's life. Caffeine can accelerate the process of burning calories, and thus stimulate weight loss. But a woman who has recently undergone childbirth is likely to be concerned that her figure has become far from ideal after 9 months of limiting mobility.

Coffee has diuretic effect. This can have both positive and negative health consequences for a nursing mother. Sometimes it is worth helping the kidneys remove excess fluid from the body. However, systematic dehydration can cause the formation of blood clots in the vessels, as well as the formation of stones in the kidneys and urinary tract.

Most lactating nursing mothers prefer to refuse coffee. Not so many popular "healthy" diets, including the use of this drink. In many ways, the stereotype that a priori caffeine cannot carry any positive properties for the body is associated either with prejudices that were formed during the Soviet era, or simply with the conclusions of homegrown "specialists" in healthy nutrition.

Interesting fact. The Internet space is replete with a lot of enthusiastic reviews of young mothers, who cannot imagine their morning without coffee, regarding the benefits and effective tonic effect of green tea. They see it as a successful and harmless alternative to coffee, which can overly arousal a child.

One of the characteristic features of coffee is the formation of addiction, similar to narcotic. If a person teaches himself to drink coffee every morning for cheerfulness, then with the exclusion of this product from the diet, he may notice a strong craving for drink, irritability, headache, light ailments and other symptoms similar to narcotic "breaking".

In recent years, many Russian parents have become accustomed to checking the recommendations of their district pediatricians with the opinion of a famous television doctor, Komarovsky. He has repeatedly spoken about the feasibility of drinking coffee during lactation.

In his opinion, there are only 3 absolute contraindications to the use of coffee when breastfeeding. These include the following.

1. Allergy to the product itself. The conclusion about this can be made only by the method of "trial and error": if after drinking coffee the child has constipation or a characteristic rash on the body, then we can talk about individual intolerance.
2. Pronounced stimulating effect. If every time when a mother decides to treat herself to a tasty drink, the child goes into hysterics and does not sleep well, then the young mother should forget about coffee for the entire period of lactation.
3. Incompatibility with some medications. For example, this refers to eupillin, a drug whose structure has many similarities to caffeine. If a baby who is breastfed is prescribed this remedy, then an additional portion of caffeine can cause an overdose.

If you have one or several of these factors at the same time, it is recommended to stop using coffee during lactation or substantially reduce it.

What is the real danger of caffeine for an infant's body? The fact is that a newborn child is not able to absorb this substance and remove. Accumulating in the tissues, caffeine can have a very negative effect on the body, but this happens with the systematic use of this drink in large quantities. For the rest, the young mother should not equate caffeine to toxic substances. Indeed, besides coffee, it is contained in a significant dose in such products as chocolate, cocoa, and all sorts of teas.

If the young mother still decided not to exclude coffee from her diet during breastfeeding, then she should follow a few rules, able to minimize the risk of any negative adverse reactions from the body of the baby.

• It is recommended to drink coffee in the morning. In the evening, caffeine will be fully eliminated from the body. In an adult, this process takes an average of 5 hours.
• Nursing mother coffee is better to drink immediately after feeding. Thus, the baby will not receive the main portion of caffeine in breast milk.
• During lactation coffee is best mixed with milk. Due to this, the caffeine dose will be reduced, and the drink itself will have a milder taste.
• Take seriously the choice of brand product. Avoid soluble surrogates, in which the "chemistry" more than the coffee itself. In addition, in the production of such cheap fakes, low-quality raw materials are often used.
• Breastfeeding experts recommend coffee connoisseurs to choose a product consisting of coarse grains. Such a drink can cause much less damage.
• If you are accustomed to drinking coffee in large doses (several cups in a row), then you should drink more plain water during the day, as this drink has a diuretic effect. Neglecting this rule, you can bring your body to dehydration, as producing breast milk, it already loses large amounts of fluid.

Nowadays, store shelves are literally inundated with various types of coffee. They differ in grade, method of processing, the degree of quality of raw materials, the presence of additives, etc.If you are an avid coffeegirl, then, most likely, you have an idea of ​​how to find the product that will satisfy your gastronomic wishes, without harming your body and baby. However, if you are not very strong in the criteria for choosing high-quality coffee, then you can use the advice of experts.

1. First of all, pay attention to the expiration date.
2. It is better to buy whole grains and grind them yourself. Grinding should be large. In ground coffee, which lies on the shelf a large number of days, the concentration of caffeine is much higher.
3. It is strongly not recommended to drink instant coffee to a nursing mother. Typically, these drinks are made from low-quality raw materials, which cost the manufacturer much cheaper. In addition, coffee that has undergone certain chemical processing during the production process contains harmful additives that, if released into the mother’s blood, can later damage the health of the infant. Usually, the consequence of drinking instant coffee by a nursing mother is the appearance of signs of allergy on the baby’s body.
4. No need to drink during lactation the so-called decaffeinated coffee. Despite the fact that this drink does not have the main substance that scares many generations of young mothers, it is strongly not recommended to drink it as an alternative to traditional coffee. In the production process, various toxic compounds that stimulate an increase in the level of cholesterol in the blood, an increase in arterial and intraocular pressure, an increase in body weight, and more, fall into the non-caffeine drink.

If, after all, you decided to postpone coffee until the baby no longer needs your breast milk, then you can easily replace this drink with another one that has similar taste and biological properties. For example:

• chicory;
• decoctions of some medicinal herbs;
• herbal teas;
• Dill water.

Chicory, despite the similarity in taste with natural coffee, does not contain caffeine at all, and, on the contrary, does not excite, but has a slight sedative effect. In addition, it has a positive effect on the pancreas and gastrointestinal tract. Chicory is very popular with nursing mothers. It is recommended to be drunk by specialists on HB for those women who are used to drinking coffee in large enough doses before pregnancy. To improve its taste, you can add sugar, milk, cinnamon.

Recently, green coffee has become widely popular. It is believed that this drink is able to assist those who want to throw off those extra pounds. What is this product? These are just coffee beans that are not heat-treated. In such coffee, the concentration of caffeine is much higher, which can negatively affect the child’s gastrointestinal tract. Therefore, until the baby grows up, do not resort to dubious methods of losing weight. You should not sacrifice the health of your crumbs for the sake of deceptive advertising appeals.

As you can see, coffee is not so bad at breastfeeding, as it was once painted. Observing reasonable moderation and carefully watching the child’s reaction to the introduction of a new product, a young mother can sometimes indulge herself with a favorite drink. In the presence of absolute contraindications it is quite possible to find a replacement for traditional coffee.

About whether to drink or not drink coffee when breastfeeding, see the following video.