Nutrition for young mother

Nutrition for young mother

Mother is the sun of the family, thus, she gives energy and life to the whole universe. The role of mother is most important amongst all the roles played by a woman.

The gratitude and appreciation cannot end till we all die because as we all know the first process of motherhood is named well as labour pains. As all mothers always only worry and focus on the health and system of whole family but a healthy mother can only take care and bring up a healthy family, Therefore all the women should give important to their health to the same level as to family members, we should specially focus on young mothers more as the whole body and life gets a turn of 360 degree in terms of:

Nutrition
Hormones
Body and lifestyle.
Like pregnancy, adequate nutrition of mother during lactation is of vital importance, as for almost next 6 months the infant is going get all his nutrition from mother's milk, thus, a young lactating mother needs extra nutrients to meet the baby's needs in addition to her own requirements. If the mother is malnourished, the secretions of milk are maintained at the cost of her own body reserves.

Thus, a complete well-balanced diet is important for a successful lactation ,where the breastfeed infant is growing well and maintaining appropriate biochemical indexes of nutritional status of mother and baby both.

Changes in terms of nutritional needs and hormones are very high in young mothers

Nutritional needs.

Energy: During first 6 months of lactation an additional 600 kcal per day is needed and later this reduces to approx 400kcal per day.

: Calcium requirement during lactation grows high due to added stress to the body of producing milk.
1000mg per day of calcium should be taken to satisfy both mother and baby needs.

: to maintain the volume of milk and portion of casein (milk protein) an additional amount of almost 15-18g per day should be added to the diet, during first 6 months.
For good quality protein has milk and milk products, egg, nuts, pulses, fish and chicken.

: As the basic calcium, protein and carbohydrate contents are maintained in the milk at cost of mother's body reserves, the vitamins like A, B, B2, b3, C, folic acid, vitamin-D, and vitamin B12 are if less in nursing mother's diet, then an evident nutritional deficiency can be observed in the infants health too.
: A supplement of vitamin-D (10µg/d) is recommended for women who avoid milk and other foods fortified with vitamin-D. Similarly, a supplement of vitamin B12 (2.6 µg/d) is recommended for completely vegetarian mothers.
Limitation in one nutrition may be a marker for another nutrient inadequacies (e.g. iron and foliate deficiencies often coexist)

The amount of water and liquids in a diet is also very important for sufficient secretion of about 850 ml milk/day.