Breastfeeding Benefits & Barriers: Postpartum weight loss

During pregnancy most women are advised to gain 25 to 30 pounds. This breaks down as follows:

1. The baby will weigh approximately 7 to 8 pounds.

2. Increased uterine blood vessels and amniotic fluid weigh approximately 3-6 pounds.

3. At least 10 pounds of the weight gain are fat stores that are laid down to enable a woman to breastfeed.

Women who choose not to breastfeed will have to diet to lose those ten pounds.

The 10 pounds of stored fat allow a breastfeeding woman to continue to nurse her baby, eat an extra 500 kilocalories a day, and still slowly lose weight over the first six months of breastfeeding.

Obese women who limited their caloric intake to approximately 500 Kcal per day less than their daily normal intake plus lactation needs and exercised 4 days per week averaged a 4.8 Kg. weight loss over 10 weeks of a study. Their infants grew similarly to the infants of a control group of similarly obese women who lost an average of 0.8 Kg. ( Lovelady, 2000 ).

A study of more than 33,000 Danish women who had given birth between 1999 and 2002 evaluated the effect of breastfeeding on maternal weight at 6 and 18 months postpartum compared to reported prepregnancy weight. The authors calculated that a Danish woman with normal or obese pregregnancy weight who gained 11-12 kg during the pregnancy and exclusively breastfed her infant for 6 months would be back to her prepregnancy weight by then. At 18 months postpartum, women who exclusively breastfed for 6 months and continued breastfeeding until their infant was 12 months of age had the lowest probability of retaining 5 or more kg of weight no matter how much weight they gained during the pregnancy ( Baker, 2008 ).

Case Study 2, part A

A mother brings her 2 month old infant in for his routine check-up. He has been growing well on only breast milk, however she plans to wean the baby because she is having "dizzy spells," especially after the first nursing in the morning.