How Much Water Should I Drink While Breastfeeding Calculator

How much water should I potable while breastfeeding? This is a question women all over the world ask. Everyone has an "expert" opinion nigh how much water yous should drink.

Not to mention the old wives' tale that tells us to drink more than water if nosotros want more than milk. We'll become over that and more in this article, plus, get to the answer y'all're looking for. Fill your drinking glass and follow along.

How Much Water When Breastfeeding?
Why You Should Drink Water
Top Signs That You're Dehydrated
Tips for Staying Hydrated
Drink Up, Mama

How Much Water When Breastfeeding?

Information technology's easy for a new mom to become defenseless upwardly in her new duties and forget to drink enough water. A non-nursing adult female should ideally drink around nine glasses of water every solar day. Does this amount change for the breastfeeding mom?

Over and to a higher place the recommended daily water intake, you lot'll need to account for your baby'due south needs. This means that you'll need to increment your daily intake by approximately three glasses per 24-hour interval, significant y'all need to eat well-nigh 12 glasses ⁽¹⁾. This will ensure that at that place's sufficient water for both y'all and your infant.

But won't that much water dilute my milk? Not at all. Here'south the affair, your torso is fabricated upward of approximately 60 percentage water, and around 87 pct of breast milk is water ⁽²⁾. You and the baby need water to function — think digestion, flushing out toxins, and everything else that water does for our bodies.

There are other factors that can bleed water from your trunk and require you to replenish information technology even more than. These include hot conditions, intense exercise, and illnesses that result in diarrhea, vomiting, or fever.

That said, there is such a thing equally "overhydration," which tin strength the body to button out excess h2o every bit urine. The result? Too many visits to the bathroom and a decrease in your milk supply, since water has been diverted from the breasts.

While overhydration isn't typically dangerous for a healthy adult female, it tin can pb to dangerous changes in trunk chemistry for people with sure atmospheric condition ⁽³⁾.

Editor's Note:

Michelle Roth, BA, IBCLC

Why Y'all Should Drink Water

While meaning, it's common to hear the phrase "eating for two." The aforementioned goes for breastfeeding. Everything y'all consume has a potential impact on you and your infant's health, including the amount of water you drink.

Hither are some solid reasons why you lot need to drink the recommended amount of h2o daily:

1. Helps You Both Stay Hydrated

For the breastfeeding mom, your trunk knows that the baby's nutritional needs to come outset. This ways some of the fluids in your torso will be diverted to milk production.

In the procedure, you lose the fluids yous need to part optimally, a scenario that may atomic number 82 to dehydration. If yous don't replenish your fluids, your baby may terminate up becoming dehydrated, as well, from a decrease in your milk supply ⁽⁴⁾. Drinking water replenishes lost fluids and keeps both you and your baby good for you.

2. Keeps Constipation at Bay

Constipation is anyone's nightmare, pure and simple. I tin't even begin to explicate the hurting a new mom feels while trying to pass hard stools, especially after having just gone through childbirth. This pain is on another level.

Rather than dread bathroom visits, or sit at that place screaming in silence as you pass a painful stool, drink more water to help you out.

3. Affects Milk Supply

Hither comes the age-old question: Does drinking h2o increase milk supply? According to enquiry published in the journal Pediatrics, drinking lots of water will not necessarily increase the amount of milk you lot produce ^(v).

However, when you don't have enough fluids in your body, your milk supply will be afflicted. Low milk production means your baby volition spend more fourth dimension suckling to satiate their hunger, but will get less milk overall.

Chances are that you will start experiencing dizziness, irritability, and even hurting in your breasts. Trust me, yous don't want to go at that place.

Top Signs That You're Dehydrated

Signs of dehydration volition vary from ane mom to the adjacent. If y'all're feeling thirsty, you're already mildly dehydrated. Nighttime-colored urine is likewise i of the clearest indicators that you demand to potable more than water. Other signs include:

Chapped lips.
Constipation.
Headaches.
Fatigue or dizziness.
Muscle cramps.
Irritability.
Reduced milk supply.
Infrequent visits to the bathroom. Less than four times per day would exist a articulate indication that something isn't quite right. Postpartum mommies tend to go more often up to 8 weeks afterward nativity, due to pressure on the bladder ⁽⁶⁾.

Tips for Staying Hydrated

With your easily total, you may find it hard to continue runway of the h2o y'all demand to drink every twenty-four hours. Here are some tips to assistance y'all along:

tips for staying hydrated when breastfeeding

Do y'all take a favorite breastfeeding spot? Keep a jug of water there and refill your drinking glass subsequently you breastfeed.
Carry a bottle of water wherever you go, and keep information technology within sight so y'all don't forget to actually beverage from information technology.
If you can't stand the gustation of apparently water, try infusing it with lemon, mint, cucumber or fifty-fifty strawberries.
Minimize your sugar intake; sugar actually hinders the absorption of h2o by your body.
Help yourself to foods that have high water content, similar cucumbers, watermelons, and soups.
Stay abroad from caffeinated drinks, sodas, and alcohol, every bit these cause dehydration.
Check out and download a hydration app, such as Waterlogged, on your phone. It volition assist you runway your h2o uptake.

Drink Up, Mama

As a breastfeeding mom, you need to drink water frequently. Not only does it keep you and the babe hydrated, only it also prevents constipation, among other things. When you don't drinkable enough, your milk supply could exist affected as well.

Make information technology your goal to drink h2o throughout the day. If yous tend to be a niggling forgetful, download a hydration app that will remind yous to potable up.

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