Can I have a cookie for my nursing mother?
Last reviewed: 19.10.2021
All iLive content is medically reviewed or fact checked to ensure as much factual accuracy as possible.
We have strict sourcing guidelines and only link to reputable media sites, academic research institutions and, whenever possible, medically peer reviewed studies. Note that the numbers in parentheses ([1], [2], etc.) are clickable links to these studies.
If you feel that any of our content is inaccurate, out-of-date, or otherwise questionable, please select it and press Ctrl + Enter.
Pregnancy and breastfeeding are periods in the life of a woman who teach her to be very careful in choosing food. After all, everything that mum eats, it is considered a food and for her baby, and therefore, necessarily reflected on his health and well-being. But if during pregnancy the woman does not see the results of her "wrong" nutrition, then during lactation culinary delights immediately become visible on the child's cheeks, reflected in his digestion, which gives a lot of excitement and worry not only to the baby on breastfeeding, but also to the newly baked Mom. It's no wonder that young mothers from all quarters are questioning such a plan: what kind of fruit can you eat when you are lactating, are not dangerous sweet desserts, whether it is possible to bake a nursing mother and many others.
Feeding the nursing mother can devote whole opuses, which will take into account all the nuances that can bring the baby inconvenience and anxiety. But today we will try to disassemble in detail only one urgent issue, concerning the choice of cookies for mother during lactation, because she sometimes so wants to pamper herself with some variety of foods and dishes on the table.
Baking and sweets with breastfeeding
To have a young mother had a lot of milk, and it was most useful, a woman's diet should be full and varied. Alas, some useful products in the lactation period fall under the ban. These are legumes, vegetables with bitter and sharp taste, citrus fruits, berries and fruits of red color, seafood, alcoholic and carbonated drinks, smoked products, marinades, mayonnaise, etc. There is also a place for baking and sweets in this list, which can include cookies.
The fact is that the immature body of a child, many of whose systems are still in the final formation stage, responds somewhat differently to the food that is habitual for us. The spicy dishes give the breast milk a bitter taste, because of which the baby can give up breast. Seafood and red berries or fruits, as well as sweets with dyes and flavors can cause diathesis (an allergic reaction, manifested by the appearance on the cheeks of red itchy spots that can become inflamed and bring a lot of anxiety to the baby).
Legumes, fast food, mushrooms, smoked meats, pickles, marinades, soda and other non-baby foods consumed by a nursing mother, cause bloating of the baby's belly, increased gas production and colic in the intestines, which results in the baby's crying and sleepless nights for the mother. As for baking and sweet foods, the result of their use can be a "complex" effect, when the diathesis on the cheeks is combined with digestive problems. All the same, sugar is a substance provoking the processes of fermentation in the intestine. And even an adult with the reception of sweets can experience some discomfort in the abdomen, and what can we say about the baby.
But let's figure out what the cookie is and how its use by the mother can affect the baby's well-being. Cookies - this is one of the options for confectionery, which is baked. In the composition of the shop cookies, in addition to the flour of salt and sugar, you can also find margarine, flavors, dyes, and other components that are inappropriate for the child's body. It is clear that such a composition of the product can lead to the appearance of allergic reactions and troubles on the part of the gastrointestinal tract in the child, which are usually reduced to increased gas production ("gazikam") and pain in the intestines (colic).
But a whole range of nutritious carbohydrate products made of flour are called cookies. Products may differ in the composition of the ingredients, taste, appearance. Not all biscuits can be attributed to sweet foods, as well as sweet biscuits can differ in the amount of sugar used in the recipe, additives in the form of creams, jam, grains of chocolate, pieces of candied fruit, etc.
In other words, biscuits can be called sweet, and salty, and lean baking of low "growth" and small sizes.
Considering the large assortment of cookies in stores and a lot of home baking recipes, which, despite the absence of harmful ingredients, is not always considered useful during breastfeeding, it is difficult to say in general terms whether it is possible to biscuit a nursing mother or not. It is possible to sort through various options of cookies and discard unsuitable options of baking. But you can do otherwise and consider those options that are allowed during breastfeeding, and those that most often appear in the questions of young mothers.
What kind of cookies can a nursing mother?
Before considering this urgent issue, let's see what the doctors say about the carbohydrate nutrition of the nursing mother. Sweet pastries and biscuits can be considered the main source of carbohydrates, and hence energy, so necessary for a woman whose body still continues to work for two, developing a natural diet for the baby. But a young mother, immensely preoccupied with the health and development of her newborn child, is forced to think not only of herself, but of the child she feeds with her milk. From its nutrition depends the composition of such a valuable product as breast milk.
Newborn babies are very delicate creatures that, despite their tenacity and strength in their fingers, have a very sensitive body that reacts sharply to the quality of products that are the source of breast milk and various changes in the diet of the nursing mother. The most sensitive to the composition of nutrition are the immune and digestive system of the baby. Therefore, in the first months of a child's life, the ration of a nursing mother should consist only of useful hypoallergenic balanced foods. And, according to doctors, cookies for such food does not apply.
For the first time, it is recommended that mother "try" the cookie 3 months after the beginning of breastfeeding. If the baby has previously had negative reactions to other, less safe foods in the ration of the nursing mother, then it will be necessary to suffer longer (4-5 months). Moreover, sweet varieties of cookies, pastries with jams and cream can be eaten only six months after delivery, and in severely limited quantities. But again, if the child's organism will react normally to such innovations.
Before you try to enter a particular biscuit in the menu, you need to carefully study its composition. Better if it's homemade cakes, which means that the nursing mother will know for sure that the finished product does not contain components that can harm her baby. And it's not just about fragrances, preservatives or dyes. The list of prohibited products also includes mayonnaise and margarine, which are often the main cause of colic in a baby breastfed. And in store baking, these components are often present, even when the butter is being cleaned in the list of ingredients, as there is no strict control over the observance of GOST, as in the Union.
The most easily absorbed by the body of the mother, and hence her child is a lean cookie, which does not contain fat and a large amount of sugar. It is this cookie that can be tried first as a "complementary meal", which in fact does not affect the properties of mother's milk.
But the point is not only what kind of cookies can be nursing mom, and from which it is worth refrain. A responsible, normalized approach to the inclusion in the diet of a woman during lactation uncharacteristic for the baby dishes and foods is also important. It should be understood that it is necessary to practice any innovations, including new products in the ration of a nursing mother, on the basis of the principle "caution does not interfere". For the first time, one or two pieces of lean (dry, biscuit) biscuits are enough, and it will take a couple of days to observe the child to understand how the "new dish" will affect his health.
If the child has no allergic manifestations or problems with digestion during this time, it will be possible to increase the norm of carbohydrates, i.е. Eat no more a couple of pieces of cookies, and a couple of pieces and more, but in the morning. During the day, you will need to watch the baby carefully to understand the reaction of his body to increase the volume of unusual food. If there are suspicious symptoms, it means that it is too early to introduce changes into the ration of the nursing mother.
But fatty shortbread cookies will be under taboos for a long time, as well as baking with jam or cream, and even more so with chocolate. As for chocolate candies and chocolate, remember that this product can be given to a child not earlier than it turns 3 years old, because chocolate has an exciting effect on the infant's nervous system, which results in sleep disturbances and other behavioral disorders.
That's how many different nuances you need to take into account to answer the question of whether a cookie can be fed to a mother. And, no one will give an unambiguous answer to this question. It should be considered in each case, taking into account the opinion of the pediatrician on the reaction of the child's organism to the change in the composition of milk.
How to choose a biscuit for a nursing mother?
This section of our article, we will devote to the questions of young mothers, who, fearing for the health of their children, are afraid to eat the familiar delicacy from childhood. Do not deny yourself the pleasure of receiving energy from cookies, you just need to decide on the types of baking that pediatricians do not forbid to eat while breastfeeding.
What are the most common questions you can hear among young mothers:
- Can I feed an oatmeal cookie to my mother?
Oatmeal porridge is one of the most useful and easy to assimilate dishes from cereals, which is a part of many dietary tables and is very useful for nursing mothers. And this is not surprising because oats are a storehouse of useful vitamins (A, E, PP, biotin, B vitamins) and trace elements (magnesium, calcium, chromium, silicon, potassium phosphorus and many others). Moreover, it is also valued for its high fiber content, which contributes to better digestion and assimilation of food, as well as enzymes that facilitate the metabolism of carbohydrates. In this way, it can be said that oats in various dishes will help improve digestion, which is important for pregnant women and nursing mothers, who usually have problems with this.
Once clever people invented to use in biscuits along with wheat, and oat flour, which not only gave baking a kind of attractive taste, but made it even more useful. You can talk about the benefits of oatmeal cookies for a long time, but our question is different: is it possible to eat such a treat with breastfeeding, because the composition of cookies is not limited to only one or two kinds of flour.
What else is included in the oatmeal cookie? According to different recipes, various ingredients are introduced into the dough. For example, butter or margarine, sour cream, eggs, salt and sugar. Or butter (margarine), molasses (or jam), milk, eggs, cinnamon, vanillin and salt.
There are quite a lot of recipes for making oatmeal cookies today, as evidenced by the variety of tastes of this batch from different producers. But anyway, the composition of the cookie includes safe ingredients, if you do not take into account a relatively small amount of margarine. It is this fat of dubious quality that can cause bloating and colic in babies.
If the cookies are cooked in butter, there is nothing to worry about, you can easily try to include such a cookie in the diet of the nursing mother when the baby is 2-3 months old. It would be nice if the cookies were not too sweet.
- Is it possible to breastfeed a breastfeeding mother?
Gallet biscuits are a special kind of baking that belongs to the category of dietary products. A feature of this type of biscuit is a low fat content, using high-quality natural fats (vegetable or butter). Quite often, biscuits are baked on water, which makes it easier to digest and reduces calorie content.
What else can contain a biscuit biscuit? Milk (instead of water), flour, sugar, starch, soda, sometimes an egg. All this is a natural safe hypoallergenic products, in vain because a biscuit biscuit is one of the first can be offered to small children to expand the diet.
The same biscuits doctors recommend to nursing mothers. Crispy thin pastry with low sugar content is very suitable for breakfast or snacks with tea or milk.
It should be understood that the biscuit biscuit is a generalized name for small shaped baked goods with low fat content and no yeast. Cookie recipes can differ, which affects the taste of the product. When lactating, you should give preference to the liver, cooked according to traditional recipes from natural ingredients without various delicacies and additives.
- Is it possible to breastfeed a mother "Mary" cookies?
Probably there is no sense for a long time to linger on this issue, because "Mary" is the name of one of the recipes of the biscuit cookie. It can be called a traditional recipe, consisting of flour, starch, butter, sugar, milk and soda. Of course, such a cookie will be a suitable option for a young mother who cares about the health and well-being of her baby, after all, the "Maria" cookie will bring only useful substances into mother's milk.
A similar composition has cookies with the names "Zatyazhnoe", "Zoologicheskoye", "Napoleon", "Bukovki", etc. Such types of biscuits can be introduced into the diet of a nursing mother from 1.5-2 months after birth, if the baby is healthy and has no problems with digestion or allergic reactions.
- Is it possible to make a shortbread cookie for a nursing mother?
As for the shortbread cookie, the answer will be ambiguous, especially when you consider that under this name there are many varieties and names of baking that differ in the content of fats and sugar. As for fatty friable cookies, this is definitely not the product that you need to use during lactation. The same can be said about sweet pastries and cookies with sugar (with sweet crust), cookies-sandwiches with a layer of sweet fat cream, baking with shop jams, pounded dyes.
Well, with sugar and fillers everything is clear, sweet dishes and chemical additives can provoke the appearance of red dots on children's cheeks, which will be evidence of an allergic reaction to a sweet and unnecessary organism. And at what here fats? But are not they considered to be heavy ingredients in dishes?
It must be said that sometimes the matter is not in the quantity of fat, but in its quality. Fatty friable biscuits are most often prepared on the basis of margarine, which, as we know, harms the child. True, there are also sorts of cookies, the fat content in which is relatively small, and it can be seen with natural butter. Perhaps, according to their taste qualities, they are inferior to margarine softly crumbly delicacies, but they are safer.
Of course, you do not need to rush such a cookie into the diet. Let the baby's body and its digestive system get stronger, and when the baby is 4-5 months old, mother can try to eat and shortbread cookies in oil.
- Is it possible to breastfeed a mother "Yubileynoe"?
First, we'll figure out what kind of cookies this is with a beautiful name. It turns out that this is a sort of shortbread cookie with more than a hundred years of experience, familiar to us from childhood under various names. This is not a friable product with a high content of margarine, and baking in butter (sometimes using cream margarine) and milk, and the amount of fat in it is close to the biscuit.
What is the composition of the cookie? According to information on the Internet by standard, the biscuit contains: wheat flour, starch, powdered sugar and an inert syrup (the same sugar), butter (margarine), milk, egg, salt, baking powder. To taste, the cookies turn out to be whiter than sweet, and more friable, although it remains rather dense.
If such a cookie is cooked in butter, the nursing mother can gradually introduce it into her diet following the biscuit and oatmeal. And the cookie on margarine is better still to give up.
- Is it possible for the nursing mother to eat cookies "Whipped Milk"?
Baking with this name is the favorite delicacy of many women, despite the fact that this cookie belongs to the category of sand, which means it has a fairly high calorie content. The aroma of melted milk gives the ordinary sandy liver a special charm, attracting all the new fans. And it will be very difficult in the lactation period for a long time to abandon your favorite dish.
If the mother during the period of pregnancy and the beginning of breastfeeding gained excess weight, she will have to endure for a long time, because shortbread cookies can not be attributed to the category of useful products for the baby, and for her it's extra pounds to the ones already available. But with a normal weight, biscuits can be eaten in small portions after 3 months of breastfeeding (no more than 2 pieces per day).
Cookies "Whipped milk" in its composition is similar to the "Jubilee". If it is cooked in butter, without mayonnaise and flavor, there will be no harm from the couple of pecans. But in the composition of the shop cookie, all these bad ingredients are most often present, and butter is often replaced by a spread or margarine (there will be no benefit to either of them from the other). Therefore, pediatricians and nurses who help them do not advise nursing mothers to eat biscuits with the smell of melted milk, unless it is cooked at home on a safe prescription.
- Is it possible to breastfeed a mother with a sesame?
It must be said that not only the cookies themselves, but also various fillers to it can cause suspicion among young mothers. And suddenly, these small grains on the surface or inside the cookies will be allergens and cause a beloved child to have diathesis or become an obstacle to normal digestion in the baby?
This is how suspiciously lactating mothers look at sesame, which is often included in the composition of sweet and salty baking. But now we will talk about biscuits with sesame.
As for the seeds of sesame seeds, there is nothing to worry about. Sesame - a useful dietary product, which is also able to stimulate lactation. It contains a large amount of calcium, which enters the breast milk and promotes the normal development and growth of bone tissue, teeth, nails, hair of the baby. Sesame is useful for the brain, and for the vessels, and for the immune system (this is a natural immunostimulant). A woman during lactation is even recommended to eat 1 tsp per day. Lightly fried sesame seeds.
But back to our liver. In the store you can find different types of cookies, flavored with sesame seeds. This is a multi-grained biscuit, in which you can also find sunflower seeds and flax seeds, cookies "Karapuz", "Oatmeal with sesame", cookies from puff pastry (heavy baking type, unsuitable for mothers) and some others.
It should be said that sesame enhances the value of any baking. The only thing left is the choice of the cookie itself. If this multi-core biscuit biscuit, which does not contain peanuts (known allergen), or oatmeal cookies - they will only benefit. But if you read the recipe for a cookie with the sweet child's name "Karapuz", where there is no fat, but there are flavors (even if identical to natural ones), then you will think about whether such a cookie will be useful for a child or it is better to buy special baby biscuits ("Malyshok", "Heinz ", Etc.) or" Maria ", and sprinkle it with sesame seeds before consumption.
Ideally, delicious biscuits with sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and flax can be baked on their own, and it certainly will not hurt the baby, even if the mother will not eat 2, but 4-5 pechenyushek a day.
- Is it possible to make a cookie with poppy for nursing mother?
Repeat about the choice of safe cookies for the hundredth time apparently no longer makes sense. Let's talk about an additional flavoring component, like poppies, which has been used in baking for centuries.
Many mothers with the word "poppy" have not very pleasant associations, but at once we say that the dry mature poppy seeds used in baking have nothing to do with the narcotic effect of poppy milk obtained from immature seeds. In this regard, there is nothing to worry about.
Mature seeds of poppy - this is a valuable food product with a rich composition of useful trace elements, containing also easily digestible protein and calcium - the building material of living cells and bones of the body. These components are especially valuable in breast milk. So, if the baby is healthy, does not have a tendency to allergies and digestive disorders, lean or not very fat and moderately sweet pastry with poppy seeds in the diet of a nursing mother will not hurt him. But with a tendency to allergies and constipation in a child from confectionery products with poppy seeds, a caring mother will have to give up. This is the opinion of allergy doctors and pediatricians.
- Is it possible to breastfeed a mother on a fructose?
Often, mothers have such a nuisance during pregnancy. At the next delivery of the analysis, an elevated glucose level is found in the blood, and the doctor diagnoses "gestational diabetes mellitus". This phenomenon is temporary, which usually disappears after childbirth, if a pregnant woman will adhere to a hypoglycemic diet. If the sugar level has not stabilized or everything has returned to normal, but the young mother is still afraid of relapse, the question of eating sweet livers is not raised. They remain banned.
But how sometimes does the nursing mother want to pamper herself with something delicious and sweet, well, just drooling at the sight of cookies and sweets. To help such women come products on sugar substitutes, which are usually collected in specialized departments of stores.
One of the safest natural sweeteners is fructose, which is added to cookies for diabetics. It is clear that such low-fat sugar-free cookies will be considered dietary and will be suitable for diversifying the ration of a nursing mother. The main thing is that the child or his mother does not have a hereditary disease associated with intolerance to fructose.
In principle, if a nursing mother really wants a sweetie, jams, jam and other sweets on fructose that are produced for diabetics will come to the rescue. A spoonful of such jam or candy can hardly harm the baby on breastfeeding, and the nursing mother will become calmer and will not suffer from "sugar hunger".
- Is it possible to give a salted biscuit to a nursing mother?
So far we have been talking more and more about all kinds of sweets and sweet cookies. But after all, the light did not come together with them. The confectionery industry now produces many kinds of unsweetened baked goods. Take the same multi-cheese biscuits or salty crackers.
As for crackers, many of them really differ in salty taste, but this taste is given to them by salt, and not by flavor additives, like in instant vermicelli. Another thing is that the cracker is a rather fatty biscuit, which is prepared with the use of butter and milk in decent quantities, not in vain pechenyushki even to the touch of some oily. And fatty foods in the diet of moms can cause disturbances in the work of another weak gastrointestinal tract in the baby, and more often in the form of intestinal colic and constipation, which are considered one of the biggest troubles.
It is clear that one or two small salted crackers per day in the nursing mother's menu will not have a significant effect on the composition of breast milk and will not harm a child for 3 months or more. But if the baby has already had serious digestive problems before, then use crackers, and even allowed biscuits is better guarded. Even homemade cakes can be banned if the doctor insists on it.
But all this can be safely experienced, replacing sweet or salty baked goods with hypoallergenic fruits, cottage cheese, lean meat, vegetables and healthy dishes from them. At least, the cookie was never considered a product of first necessity and did not have much vital importance.
If you look carefully, you can see that there is almost no such thing as a banned cookie. Restrictions mainly apply to margarine biscuits and too sweet or fatty varieties, as well as various additives in the form of yeast, chocolate, flavors, candied fruits and other. Even a coconut biscuit in the absence of an allergy in a child to coconut shaving is not a contraindication, although it is not worth taking a great interest in it (the norm of coconut chips in the ration of a nursing woman is not more than 30 g).
So, strict prohibitions are not present, after all cookies are not poisonous or toxic product. Simply the possibility of using a given type of cookie by a nursing mother depends largely on the characteristics of the child's body, the formation of its digestive and the coordination of the work of the immune system. Some babies dry biscuits, eaten by their mother in small quantities, do not harm even in the first month of life. Confirmation of this can be found at forums where young mothers share their secrets and achievements.
Many mothers adhere to the advice of our grandmothers who believed that the nursing mother should eat everything to ensure that her baby's nutrition and nutrition were full. And, it is necessary to say, many people succeed without large losses. A pair of red pimples on the cheeks and a couple of sleepless nights because of the constant crying caused by colic is the usual result of the abuse of biscuits. And further, according to the reviews, everything is gradually coming back to normal.
Those who do not wish their child even such short-term torment begin a little bit with the biscuit and oatmeal cookies, then expand their diet, but do it gradually, starting from 2-4 months of the child's life. First a piece of cookie, a whole day later, a week later - 2-3 cookies. And all this with careful observation of the baby's condition. There are no suspicious symptoms (red cheeks, loose stools or lack of it, anxiety, etc.), so you can safely introduce new types of cookies into the diet. But in everything you need to know the measure, because even a strong ventricle can be ripped off if you actively eat fatty biscuits on margarine or even in large quantities.
Readers are still interested in the question, is it possible to biscuit a nursing mother? Nursing mother can almost anything that will be useful to her and her little miracle. As you can see, if you wish, you can always find such recipes that will allow you to diversify the diet of the wet nurse and not harm the child's tender body. Strongly limit yourself in everything is not worth it. Eventually, one day, the day when the baby will have to eat other foods, besides mother's milk, will come. And his body needs to be prepared for this event, gradually introducing more and more dishes into the diet of the nursing mother.