Diet Milk...? (expressed)

[Dragonflye]

Hey guys

I was wondering had heard of the following and if you think theres any merit to it...

I saw my DSN yesterday and we had a discussion on why my daughter (almost 5 weeks old now!!!) is still not putting on much weight, still 5% below her birth weight and 1 of the thoughts we discussed was that as I'm spending most of my time hypo (from pump and CGM data it works out about 70%+ of the time) if the milk I'm producing has less calories in it as my sugars are low all the time.

Do any of you think this could be plausable? Its bad enough I have to bottle feed expressed milk to be able to calculate how much she's getting and I really dont want to swap to formula but I will do whatevers best for my daughter and was wondering if any other parents had experience of this or if anyone (parent or not) had any opinions on the idea my dsn said

Jan

 

[JConnor]

Hi again,
YES, my DSN also advised me to keep my sugars higher in the first few months, Target of 8-10 rather than 6-8 to help prevent the hypos. I know its not great in the long run but was told that last thing i needed was to be going hypo all time while trying to look after a young baby.
Jess

 

[Dragonflye]

8lb12oz... still 4.7% below her birth weight but her weight is in perfect proportion to her length so it looks like my milk isnt low on calories as she's gaining at a steady rate and her measurements are all in proportion, the health visitor thinks i should continue doing what im doing and dont need to introduce formula

my insulin requirements just need to be sorted... lol before pregnancy i was on about 25units basal a day, now im on 13.675 and that doesnt factor the tbr of 70% im running lol

 

[JConnor]

Bare in mind that breastfeeding also reduces sugars ALOT, if you are expressing that will be using some of the sugars up.
As long as Amelia stays in the right proportion don't worry, its natural ( if she had gone back to her birth weight after 10-14 days and maintained that level they would be saying in a year or so that she was obese)
I am totally clueless about pumps so sorry if im talking nonsense but could you knock your insulin right down and then build it up slowly to refind your new level?
Jess

 

[LaughingHyena]

Glad to hear your health visitor was reassuring. My two were both slow growers but you wouldn't know it now.

With regards to the content of your milk my understanding is that your body will put babies needs ahead of mums where possible. So if you are short of a particular vitamin or whatever in your diet then what there is goes to the milk first.

There's a few papers linked here on composition of the milk of mums with diabetes which might make interesting reading
http://kellymom.com/bf/concerns/mother/diabetes-maternal/

There's also plenty of information on the kellymom site on expressing and weight gain in breastfed babies too if you look around. I found some good tips there when my first was in NICU. Hat's off to you for managing to keep up with expressing this long, it's a lot to keep up with with a tiny baby and an older one to look after too.