Supporting your milk supply with proper postpartum care - with Brooke Harmer, The Well Nourished Mama | Breastfeeding with Confidence Podcast Ep 54
- jaimiezaki
- Aug 15
- 26 min read
Updated: Nov 7
Nourishing Postpartum: How Nutrition Impacts Breastfeeding and Recovery
Struggling with low milk supply—and no one can tell you why? Here’s what no one is saying loud enough: your milk supply is deeply connected to how you’re nourishing your body. It’s not just calories; it’s the right nutrients, at the right time, for postpartum healing and lactation.
In this Breastfeeding With Confidence episode, I (Jaimie Zaki, IBCLC, doula, and mom of five) sit down with perinatal nutritionist Brooke to expose the missing piece of the milk supply puzzle: postpartum nutrition. We unpack how diet, stress, and depletion can mimic “low supply,” and what to eat to truly support breastfeeding.
This blog post is a general summary of Brooke & Jaimie's conversation -- for the best understanding of how your nutrition can impact your milk supply, be sure to listen to the podcast episode linked above! Subscribe to the Breastfeeding with Confidence Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you listen to your podcasts!
Why Postpartum Nutrition Matters for Milk Supply
Postpartum is its own physiologic season. Nutrient gaps (iron, B vitamins, iodine, choline, omega-3s, magnesium) can look like low supply: fatigue, slow letdowns, mood swings, and inconsistent output. When your body is underfueled, it will struggle to keep up with the demands of milk production.
The FLOWS Formula for Navigating Supply Struggles
Use Brooke’s FLOWS checklist to identify what to address first:
F – Fuel: Eat enough protein, healthy fats, and fiber-rich carbs; hydrate with minerals (not just water).
L – Latch: Effective milk removal matters—check flange size if pumping and assess latch function, not just appearance.
O – Oxytocin: Lower stress, increase skin-to-skin, and build real-life support to keep letdowns flowing.
W – Watch: Track trends without panic—note changes in pump output, baby’s behavior, or letdown timing.
S – Sleep: Support quality sleep with blood-sugar balance, low-light nights, and phone-free feeds.
What to Eat for Abundant Milk Supply
Truthfully, you shouldn't be eating "for your milk supply" -- you should be tailoring your meals in the first weeks postpartum to support your WHOLE body in recovering from pregnancy and birth. Prioritize warm, digestible meals in the first weeks: bone-broth soups, slow-cooked meats, stews with root veggies, eggs, sardines/salmon, full-fat dairy (if tolerated), avocado, oats, lentils, and mineral-rich beverages. These foods rebuild iron stores, stabilize blood sugar, and provide the building blocks for prolactin and oxytocin to work optimally.
Stress, Birth Recovery, and Milk Production
Unresolved birth stress (NICU stays, unexpected cesarean, difficult inductions) can dysregulate the nervous system and suppress oxytocin. Healing your body and your story—through gentle support, counseling, and intentional nourishment—often restores flow more effectively than “lactation cookies.”
Start Strong (Even When You’re Exhausted)
Batch cook soups, keep protein on hand (rotisserie chicken, meatballs, egg bites), sip mineralized drinks, and eat breakfast within an hour of waking. Small, steady choices beat perfection.
Connect with Brooke: The Well Nourished Mama Podcast
Work with Jaimie:
Prepare for Breastfeeding During Pregnancy
Join the Confident Mama Breastfeeding Academy today!
Full Episode Transcript:
that checklist is gonna set you up for success and it's also gonna help you. Understand what area you need to work on if you are seeing issues and take action immediately. And then if there's still something going on, then we know that maybe it's a little bit more complex.
Hey Mama Bear. Welcome to the Breastfeeding With Confidence podcast. Do you dream of bonding with your baby through exclusive breastfeeding, but worry about breastfeeding pain or low milk supply? Maybe you're struggling with breastfeeding and no one seems to have any answers. I'm Jamie Doula, international Board certified lactation consultant, and Mom of five, and I have been where you are after working through painful latches, milk supply worries, and postpartum depression, and.
Supporting countless mothers through their breastfeeding journeys for over eight years. I'm here to tell you breastfeeding doesn't have to be perfect to be positive. Each week I'll share breastfeeding tips to help you prevent and overcome unexpected breastfeeding challenges so you can actually enjoy bonding with your baby.
If you are ready to shut out the toxic whispers of the world, embrace your God-given intuition and release your inner fierce Mama bear. Grab some coffee or your favorite herbal tea and let's dive in.
okay, so we have Brooke here today, and I'm so excited because we are going to be talking about perinatal nutrition, which I think is something we don't talk about enough.
So, Brooke, can you tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, who you serve, and why this is so important to you? Absolutely. First of all, if you hear any silly sounds, that's my baby. He's joining us for our call today. , But yes, like you said, my name's Brooke. I'm a perinatal nutritionist and that basically just means that I specialize in nutrition for moms.
And the reason that I feel like that is so important is because. As moms, our needs biologically, not just culturally but biologically, are actually different than the standard advice that we get from, you know, the USDA or influencers or whatever, because our bodies have added stressors, right? We're pregnant or we're postpartum and breastfeeding, and there are nutritional differences.
For those specific phases of life. And so telling moms, oh, we just need to eat like a low calorie diet and have low calorie dressing and you know, we just need to exercise more. That stuff does not work for us because we not only have to take care of our bodies, but we're in charge of sustaining at least one more human life.
If you're a twin or a triplet mom, bless your heart. Right? So really understanding that. You know, the same basic principles apply, like how you build your plate and what foods are important, but then understanding how to tweak it a little bit to work in your favor and support you with these extra needs that you have as a mom.
So. I got into this because I went through pregnancy and postpartum for the first time, and pregnancy was awesome. You know, there were so many resources out there. My doctor was metaphorically holding my hand the whole time. You know, there's so many prenatal appointments and so many opinions, and then you give birth and you're set out into the wild with nothing.
And then you show up to your six week appointment, they probably don't even examine you that much, at least in my experience. And they're like, okay, you're good. And you're like, am I, I don't feel good. And so you're just kind of left to figure it out. And then, you know, years down the road, we wonder why we have these chronic health issues, or why our joints and our ability to build muscle just isn't really the same.
Or we have these dramatic mood swings that just seem to come out of nowhere and it's because we're not given the support that we need nutritionally from the beginning. So when I went through that myself, I thankfully was able to figure out how to work with my body on a holistic level, and now I help moms do the same so that we can actually like want to show up and be a mom every day.
And like feel good in our body doing it too. Yeah, for sure. I think I, , read a statistic somewhere and you know, statistics are whatever they are, but it said something like 97% of. Women in the United States are technically malnourished. Like, yeah, we might have like an obesity crisis and all of this, but there's like, we're malnourished because we're not, , we're not taking care of our bodies in the way that they need.
And if you really dig deep into people's micronutrient levels and everything, you're finding that they're not balanced the way they should be. Some people, you know, we're just not getting, , and processing. Our food and nutrition the way that I think our bodies were designed to, and I, I really appreciate everything you said because I think postpartum is when that really.
Rears its ugly head, and then we get brushed off as like, oh, you just have postpartum depression. Well, what happens if postpartum depression is directly linked to nutritional status, which we know to some degree it can be. So why are we not talking about this more? , What do you think it is that's like stopping people from having this conversation?
I honestly believe that it's the assumption that postpartum is the same as like your normal default state, which is not the case. Just like we have our trying to conceive fertility phase and we have pregnancy, which is a little bit different, postpartum is its own phase. It's not just, you're not pregnant anymore, you're.
Quote, back to normal postpartum is its own phase, and so I think a lot of these problems stem from the, the misunderstanding that. Postpartum doesn't need to be treated different, you know? Yeah. You think about any other medical procedure or whatever where you have surgery or you know, maybe you like sprained your ankle, you don't necessarily need surgery, but like you hurt your ankle enough that maybe you need to stabilize it for a couple weeks and then.
What do they do? They send you to physical therapy. They tell you how to alter your lifestyle, and they say, okay, maybe you need to add this into your diet to kind of help with this. We do that with everything else in our life, but for some reason, pushing a human being through your vagina or cutting them out of your stomach doesn't warrant the same treatment and.
I'm sorry. Um, I might be coming off a little bit strong, but can it's tell passion about this. It's okay. I'm all about being as blunt as possible and it can, it can feel a little harsh sometimes, but I think that's the reality check we all need to actually make progress here. Yeah. It just, it doesn't make sense.
Like, I literally don't understand. And yes, birthing a human is not the same thing as like breaking your collarbone or getting a knee replacement. But I would argue that it's, there's like a whole lot more than just getting knee replacement. It's a major, like, it might not be a quote medical event by default, but it's, um, in the United States, most birth are medical events, whether they should be or not, and.
Our bodies are going through something so huge and transitional. It's not just the physical strain, it's the emotional strain. And that all uses and depletes our nutrient source differently. Um, and I just, you know, as a nurse we took like nutrition, right? Like you learn how many calories of gram of protein is worth and stuff, but we didn't learn this.
You know, and so realizing that like everything we were taught on how, like kinda like you said before, like how to build your plate the right way is, is not actually like what the government says it should be. And we, we might have to take a different approach to really take care of our bodies is so interesting.
Let's kind of get into everything that you, you know, we talked about before about milk supply and nutrition and how that works together, because
I find that so many new moms have, you know, stress and concern about milk supply, which is so normal and so understandable, right? Like, we're in charge of feeding a baby. Of course we're gonna wanna make sure it's enough. , But so often when we have that perception of low milk supply, we go into the mommy group.
It's. Eat some lactation cookies, drink the pink drink from Starbucks, get a body armor. And I know as a lactation consultant, that always kind of like makes me cringe a little bit because that's a one. Not a good approach. Two, it's very much an oversimplification of the nutritional side of milk supply.
And number three, it's not addressing the root cause. A lot of times, you know why you're having milk supply issues, there's different reasons. And if you don't understand the root cause, you can't implement a plan. That is going to help. So if it is a nutritional thing, like okay, maybe certain things might help but defaulting to those things, um, as like, you know, like I always think like with lactation cookies, I find it kind of frustrating 'cause it's like, if, if it is really truly a nutritional issue for your milk supply, then we need to overhaul your nutrition, not just add in some cookies.
So I would love to hear your thoughts on this and kind of your approach to educating women on. How to nourish their bodies to make a strong milk supply. Absolutely. , Like you said, when it comes to milk supply, there are so many bigger root causes than not drinking enough body armor or not having enough brewers, yeast, or whatever it is.
And one of the biggest ones that often goes overlooked is. How you're recovering postpartum, like outside of the the need to produce milk. A lot of women don't realize that any lingering birth trauma that goes unresolved, not just like from a medical sense, but an emotional sense. Mm-hmm. Whether your baby had to go to the NICU or you were planning on a vaginal birth and you ended up with a cesarean or.
You were planning on a home birth, and then you needed to go to the hospital for Pitocin because you weren't progressing or whatever it is, birth trauma is gonna have an effect on your milk supply because it's affecting your stress. Yeah. And it's affecting your body. And a poor postpartum recovery is going to impact your milk supply because your milk supply is.
Interconnected to every other part of your body, your thyroid, your adrenals, your liver, your gut health, your, your brain health, right? All of these things directly impact our milk supply. You are speaking my language and I love it so much. 'cause you're saying it in such a more beautiful way than I can.
There we go. There we go. But that's why like lactation cookies or body armor or these things sometimes work, but not always. Because if you have adrenal fatigue or you have a sluggish liver, or you have birth trauma that you haven't processed yet, and your nervous system is still holding on to the imprint of that emotional trauma.
Your milk supply is gonna take a hit because your body took a hit. . So I think the biggest thing for moms to remember is that we need to make sure our body is okay first, and then we can worry about our milk supply. If we're seeing problems in our milk supply, that means that there were problems with our body before our milk supply came around.
Just to kind of build on that, it's. You said like, you know, your emotional state and all of that, and I, I think sometimes, you know, sometimes these body armors and lactation cookies do quote work because. We're, we're dealing with like anxiety and when a mom feels like she's doing something that can alleviate that anxiety.
If, if that's what the problem was, if that's what the root cause was. So I, I, yeah, I just wanted to kind of mention that because I know a lot of moms do hear like, oh, well it worked for me and it's, I'm not dismissing that it worked for you, but it could have been because you just needed to feel like you were.
Doing something or like, it's not always that that is a solution. I was just thinking, I have been having a lot of really good conversations with my moms in my dms and I will like screenshot their responses so that I remember like. What these moms are saying.
And I can kind of like touch on that. So I was going through some of my screenshots and you would be shocked at how many moms say, I, you know, baby was born at 36 weeks and had to stay in the nicu and my supply has been low from day one and I'm so stressed about it. Or, you know,
my husband didn't really get paternity leave, and so I've been trying to figure this out on my own and I'm just so stressed all the time and I just can't figure out how to help my milk supply. Like so many moms are coming to me saying, I'm so stressed. I'm so stressed. This happened and I'm still stressed about it, or This happened, and then I saw a dip in my milk supply and I'm still stressed about it so much.
Of our struggles come back to stress, to nervous system regulation. Um, and you know, physiological stress too. If your body didn't recover well, that's physiological stress and your milk supply is gonna be affected by that. So. Really focusing on postpartum recovery and educating yourself about postpartum recovery before you get there is gonna be huge because if you understand how to support your body from the moment you give birth, then it's gonna be so much easier to figure out your milk supply.
Yeah, absolutely. , So what is some practical tips that you have for moms to kind of figure out why, why they're struggling with their milk supply? To figure it out, out? Is it stress? Do I have a nutritional deficiency? Is it, you know, maybe it's a latch issue, maybe it's a combination. I typically see as a lactation consultant that there's a combination of things and the first thing we do is .
First, we've gotta regulate our nervous system. Second, we have to work on making sure the baby's actually removing milk. Third, we start digging into mom's leg, like you said, like gut health, nutritional status, um, thyroid health. Um. A lot of moms don't realize that if they are insulin resistant, they might not have been diagnosed with diabetes, but they have insulin resistance and that can impact milk supply and milk production.
So what are kind of some of your tips for helping moms navigate where to start? I love this question. So I created an acronym that will help you get started. Like super strong from the beginning and also like help diagnose these problems. Not diagnose, but like kind of identify problems on your own and take action immediately.
So it's called the flows formula. So we're gonna work with the word flows. First is F and that's fuel. How are you fueling your body? Are you eating enough calories? You would be shocked at how many moms are just undereating because they're like, sweet, I'm not pregnant anymore. I'm not at all. It's time to lose the baby weight.
No, I, I would not be shocked at all. And I don't wanna get too, , off course on this, and I'll probably have to do another episode on it, but I hear so many moms talking about wanting to lose weight postpartum, but not wanting to hurt their milk supply. And they get real focused on calories and I'm always like.
You need to eat more calories, do not calorie restrict. You can keep your milk supply up and lose weight, but calorie restriction is not the way, at least not the calorie restriction that we have. Always like been trained to think of, like, you need to up your baseline before you try and drop it. So it's, it's, yes, that one just, I get very like big feelings about that one.
Yes. Um, and for moms listening, I eat 2,800 calories a day. I'm exclusively breastfeeding and I've lost 15 pounds and I'm not even four months postpartum yet. So it's a thing. Yeah. You don't have to restrict calories to lose weight. It is, it, I, um, after my third daughter was born, my husband deployed when she was three weeks old, and the only way I could like.
Well, like once she hit six weeks, the only way I could survive with three babies, like under four, was to go to the gym and use the daycare so I could like, get two hours of me time and shower. And then after like a couple weeks, I was like, I can't just come here and shower and read a book, like I'm gonna start exercising,
and I was, I, I had that fear like briefly and then I was like, Nope, I just need to eat more. And I think I was eating about 26 to 2,800 calories a day. And my mom was like, how are you eating this much food and losing weight? And I'm like. That's like, you have to not just look at the calories. And I know there's a lot of people who will disagree with this.
You can't just look at the calories. You've gotta look at the quality of that nutrition as well. And I think that's where, you know, if you're eating 2,800 calories of cake and cookies because you think cookies are gonna fix your milk supplies, we're, we're not nourishing, our bodies, we're still not fueling our bodies.
So let's get back to that. So flows F is fuel. Yes. And this one, like we could honestly, like you said, do a whole episode about this. So I'll just keep it really simple. But for fuel, are you eating enough? Are you building your plate the right way? You know, does your plate have protein, fat, and fiber on it?
, And are we like genuinely choosing. Nourishing foods, are we focusing mostly on whole foods that are minimally processed? Are we trying to cook at home as often as possible? All those things. So that's fuel. , Also I would throw hydration in there. And another, another thing that drives me nuts is moms are like, oh my gosh, I have to drink so much water.
So they drink a gallon of water. Now they're dehydrated because the ratio of water to electrolytes and minerals is totally skewed. So if you're drinking a ton of water and you still feel thirsty and you are not seeing results, it's because you don't have enough minerals. You need to be drinking your minerals.
So that's kind of fuel in a nutshell, is the food and hydration altogether. Then we get to l and l is latch. Now, this is where most moms think that this is the only thing they can work on, right? We're taught supply and demand, and you have to make sure that your baby is, is removing milk. And like you and I both know that is part of the picture, but it's not the whole picture.
So if you're exclusively breastfeeding or just breastfeeding at all. Are we encouraging a good latch from baby? Are we feeding at the breast often? Are we feeding on demand? If you're pumping, have you measured your nipple to get the right flange size? Because it might not be a latch, but you still have to make that physical connection, right?
So. Making sure that your flange size is correct and you understand. And I just wanna add to that too. Um, just because your latch looks good doesn't mean it's working well. So kind of get past that idea of like, well, everybody said the latch looks good, so it's a good latch. Like it could be deeper than that.
. Yes. , To illustrate that example, if you are three months postpartum and you come to me and you say, my supply was great, and now at three months postpartum, it seems like it dropped out of nowhere. What's going on? I would argue that your baby did not have a good latch and they were just riding on that oversupply while your body was regulating uhhuh and now your body has played catch up.
It's not making enough milk because your baby wasn't actually removing milk effectively from the beginning, so that's really good. I agree 100%. I, I feel like I'm telling moms this all the time. I'm like, I am so glad you're not in pain. I am so glad your baby's gaining weight well, but I can see they're not using their mouth properly right now, and this is going to hurt you in three months.
It's fine right now because they're gaining weight right now, but in three months. You're, you're gonna be coming back to me wondering what happened. And I, it happens, it happens all the time. I'm like, uh, guess what? It caught up with me. I'm like, yes, it did. No, let's, let's see what we can do. So that is, that is a really important thing, especially if you're a second time mom and breastfeeding didn't work the first time and you're listening to this and you're preparing you for your second breastfeeding experience and you're thinking back.
And, and you had a similar experience where your milk supply dropped out of nowhere. Your milk supply doesn't disappear overnight. It just doesn't. So like this is something you need to think about, like this is probably. Part of what happened? Yes. So L is for latch, whether you're pumping or, , exclusively breastfeeding.
O is for oxytocin. So this is where we kind of address the stress factor, right? Oxytocin is our feel good hormone, and it's one of the two essential hormones that keep our milk supply going. If we are constantly stressed all the time or if our body is stressed because it's not getting the help that it needs, that also counts.
Even if you feel fine mentally, your body could be stressed. , And so if you are stressed all the time. It's going to have an effect on your oxytocin levels, which will naturally affect your milk supply. , So addressing your stress. Are you regulating your nervous system? How is your relationship with your partner?
, How is your support system outside of your immediate family? Do you have neighbors or church friends or. Extended family members that are helping, or do you feel like you're trying to do all this by yourself, right? Addressing that stress and that oxytocin w is for watch, and this just means like, are you paying attention to your supply?
Are you noticing, hey, like my baby's eating a little bit longer than he normally does. I wonder if he's cluster feeding or if he just feels like there's not enough milk. I'm gonna take note of that and watch it over the next couple days. Or, Hey, I've been pumping and it feels like it's taking longer for my let down to initiate than it normally is.
I wonder if that's just a fluke or if something's going on, I'm gonna watch for that and see if that was just like a one-off thing, or if this is, you know, a consistent problem. So really watching your supply and trying to take notice of changes. Without freaking out about it first, right? Yes. I love that.
Come at it from a place of curiosity, but not panic and not shame either. Yes. Right? Yes. So watch is huge. And then S is for sleep. And moms always laugh at me when I say this one. They're like, Brooke, I don't sleep. I have a newborn. And I'm like, yes. We can't really always affect how much we're sleeping or how long we're sleeping.
Stretch, but we can control how well we sleep when we are sleeping. Mm-hmm. If you are supporting your circadian rhythm and you are supporting your melatonin production and you're supporting your blood sugar throughout the day, you can still get really restorative sleep, even if it's in three hour chunks.
In the middle of the night, I don't know if you're about to say the same thing that I am thinking, but I think the biggest interrupter of sleep for new moms in our current generation is not the baby. It is. I have a question about feeding at 2:00 AM I started googling it now I've got that blue light in my face and it's not supporting.
Sleep. And now I didn't even realize my baby's been asleep for two hours, but I've been awake and now the baby's waking up again, and now I'm exhausted. And I see this cycle happen over and over. , Do you, do you kind of see the same thing when you're flushing this out with the moms you're working with?
Oh my gosh, yes. I, you know, you see reels of moms joking like, oh look, you can tell that I was up feeding last night because look, Amazon had a delivery today. Like stuff like that, we joke about it and that's great. Like we need some humor in our lives, but there is absolutely no need for you to be on your phone for those middle of the night feedings.
Even if you are awake for 45 minutes, there is. Absolutely no reason for you to be on your phone. Yeah. That is just telling your brain that it's time to be awake instead of time to be like as asleep as possible. Right. Because you still have to be up doing stuff. Yes. I like, I like to tell moms to get those, um, salt lamps because they have like the orange glow and you can see what you need to see without fully waking up you or your baby.
Like you're still supporting that. Um, you know, those sleepy hormones and your brain understanding its sleep time, you can still see, but you're not just disrupting your brain, um, for sleep. Yes. So get a nightlight, just like a $3 nightlight from Walmart. That's motion or not motion, that's light activated.
So when the light turns off, the nightlight turns on. Right. So get one of those for your bathroom so that you're not flipping on lights to go pee or wash your hands. Mm-hmm. And. Choose a, a light that is low stimulating and low intensity. So for me, we have the hatch sound machine that also doubles as a nightlight.
And we tried red light for a little bit, like the color red, and I had to crank it up really, really high to be able to see baby to like do their diaper changes or whatever. Yeah. And I looked at my husband, I was like, Tyler, this is not working. We have to figure out a different color. And he's like. What about green?
I use night vision goggles in the military and they're green. So what if we used green? And I was like, well, that's genius. So now we use the green light on our hatch sound machine at like. 17% intensity and it's totally enough to get up, walk around the room, change baby's diaper, grab a new pair of jammies, whatever, without like actually waking up baby.
And I see these men can actually be brilliant sometimes. Yes. Talk to them. Oh my gosh. Yes. So supporting your sleep, right? And like we talked about, circadian rhythm. Are we looking at our phone first thing in the morning or are we getting natural light on our eyes? Are we flipping on all the lights in the house all day long?
Or are we letting the light come through the windows and only turning on lights in the evening? Are we eating breakfast? You'd be shocked at like how big of a difference breakfast makes in your sleep. Yeah. Because its affecting you with cortisol. Absolutely, and I, you know, I'll sometimes ask moms who are struggling with milk supply for like a food journal and we go over what they're eating and it's just like, oh, I skipped breakfast and then I ate a bagel for lunch and then I had a piece of chicken for dinner and I'm like, friends.
Friends. I get it. Because I am really good at starving myself and not knowing I'm hungry until like I have to be very intentional about eating. I get it. But it's like you look at that and you're like, how do we as a society not look at this and immediately think we're not supporting our bodies and if we're not supporting our bodies, you know, everybody wants to say.
Like the ba the mom's gonna make milk for the baby. The, the body's gonna prioritize. The baby mom's gonna be the one who struggles. But in our culture, I think we have gotten so, like so many moms are coming into pregnancy and birth depleted, that our bodies, they, they don't have the wiggle room and the buffer space to protect the milk supply.
Even when mom is struggling a little bit, they're already so. Far gone that it's like having a baby basically, like nukes their freaking nervous system and nutrient status. Um, so it's just, I, I really love how you said, you know, this all starts with education before you have your baby, probably before you even get pregnant, honestly.
Absolutely. And you know, your pregnancy is gonna have an effect on your postpartum and your lactation, your childbirth experience is going to affect it. And then how you treat your body early postpartum is going to affect it. You know, are you, are you reaching for salads and smoothies at day three postpartum, or are you reaching for stews and soups and bone broth?
Mm-hmm. So many moms are like, oh my gosh, I need to eat healthy, I need to lose weight. And. They're reaching for these salads. Your body can't freaking process a salad when it has the A wound, the size of a dinner plate on the inside, like your body's not in a place to be eating raw fruits, raw vegetables, cold smoothies, and that's like a whole thing of itself.
But yeah, so bringing it all back to the flows, formula, fuel latch, oxytocin, watch and sleep, and that checklist is gonna set you up for success and it's also gonna help you. Understand what area you need to work on if you are seeing issues and take action immediately. And then if there's still something going on, then we know that maybe it's a little bit more complex.
I love that. And we need the help with someone like you or I to get through that. Yeah. I love that. I love that so much. . That is, that is so helpful. What I'm taking away from this is that basically we don't know how to nourish and take care of our bodies and we have to learn.
So if people want to learn from you how they can nourish their bodies to really support their healing postpartum, you know, support their thyroid health, uh, support their milk supply, how can they find you and what resources do you have for them to learn how to nourish their bodies? Okay, you can find me at the well-nourished mama underscore on Instagram.
And then my website and my podcast are the Well-Nourished Mama. , And I have my signature cookbook. It's a postpartum recovery cookbook called The New Mama, and it's not just a cookbook of a bunch of recipes that you can make for postpartum. , I did it a little bit different than. What you'll see on the market right now.
So what I did is I sat down and I said, okay, my body's stage of healing and my body's nutrient needs are different at three days postpartum than at 30 days postpartum. So how can I adapt these recipes to fit that? So it's kind of in. A meal plan format where week one has its own set of recipes and then you get to week two and it's a completely new set of recipes that have different nutrient profiles and different ratios of fats and protein and carbs and whatever.
Because your body's needs are changing as you progress through postpartum recovery. So it walks you through the first six weeks of postpartum recovery, and then at the beginning of each week, there's uh, like a little check-in that says, this is where your body's at. This is what's happening with your body.
This is what's normal. This is what's not normal. Here's how we're approaching your nutrition this week to meet those needs so that you know, 'cause I'm, I'm assuming you're not just using my cookbook, although that would be awesome if you do, you know, have someone else bring you a meal. You can say, Hey, can you make sure that this meal has.
This ingredient or can you make sure that this meal has, you know, extra protein or whatever so that you can modify everything else to fit the principle of what your body needs. So that's my, I love that. That's amazing. I love that so much. Um, I think that meal plan approach is so great because it takes a lot of the decision making fatigue out of it, and it allows other people, like you said, if they're bringing you a meal.
Maybe you can say, Hey mom, can you make this specific meal in a quantity that we can kind of reuse throughout the week? Um, I I do have a question. Are these meals family friendly? Like will they benefit? Absolutely. Um, my kids, my kids have been eating these recipes. Sorry, we kind of cut out a second. Do you want me to start over?
Yeah, you can. Yeah. Okay. Let me wait for it to equalize for a second. I hear you. Absolutely. My kids and my husband have been eating these recipes for almost two years now. Um, and you know, a lot of the inspiration for these recipes came from traditional meals that your kids probably already eat. Were just making some swaps to make it more nutritious.
So one of the recipes in week two, I believe, is my homemade hamburger helper. So it's the noodles and the beef and the tomato sauce, except. If there's four hidden vegetables in there, we use bone broth instead of water to cook the noodles. , It's gluten free to be easier on your gut health like. Things like that, that your kids would naturally gravitate towards are in this meal plan.
, So super family friendly and it also, if you want, can come with a meal prep guide that you can use during pregnancy. It'll take you through two weeks of freezer meal prep to say, okay, here's your grocery list. Here's the recipes we're making, here's the schedule of when you're gonna make it so that it doesn't feel overwhelming, and then you can freeze it.
Here's the instructions for when you wanna thaw and eat it. Help you get ready before baby comes. I wish I had that five times. Right. That's amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining me. This has been amazing. I think, , every mom listening has learned so much and is going to get so much out of this. , So if you are listening and you wanna support yourself, go listen to her, grab her cookbook because trust me, nutrition postpartum makes the biggest difference in the world.
Alright, mama bear. That is a wrap for today. If this episode helps you feel a little more confident or a little more prepared for breastfeeding, can I ask you a quick favor? Go ahead and leave me a review. It helps other moms find this podcast and join us in this amazing community of fierce and confident Mama bears.
And hey, if you know a friend who could use some encouragement or real talk about pregnancy, breastfeeding, and all things motherhood, share this episode with her. You've got this Mama Bear Trust your instincts, stay fierce, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
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Jaimie Zaki is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) and mom of 5! Jaimie has volunteered as a La Leche League Leader, worked as a nurse, doula, and birth photographer, and is the host of the Breastfeeding With Confidence Podcast and founder of the Confident MamaBear Society. Jaimie provides holistic breastfeeding advice for pregnant & new moms, helping them overcome unexpected latching trouble and milk supply issues. She empowers mothers to make informed decisions from a place of confidence and intuition.
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