The Hidden Cost of Breastfeeding

This post isn’t about bashing breastfeeding. I write this as a fierce advocate of breastfeeding beyond infancy and as a mother who sings and shouts about the benefits of breastfeeding for mothers and their children alike. But what the conversation is often missing is the hidden cost of lactating in a world which doesn’t recognize just how much you are giving. 365 days a year. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Even when your baby’s not literally latched onto you, your body is making milk by drawing from your blood. Your milk is fortified with everything that your baby could possibly need. And even if your diet isn’t perfect, mama (like mine!), your milk remains the most nutritionally dense, optimal food for your baby. I’m sharing this because I see the gap between the beautiful, holistic yoga mom nursing in a field of sunflowers and the reality - which can be incredibly draining (pun intended). Here’s what you need to know so that you too do not end up as a raisin of a woman.

What Your Body Actually Needs While Breastfeeding

More Vitamin C - Your body prioritizes vitamin C in your milk, drawing from your tissues and immune reserves when dietary intake is low.

More Vitamin D - Essential for both your bone health and baby’s development, especially if you’re not getting adequate sun exposure.

More Iron - You need more iron while breastfeeding than when you’re not pregnant (though slightly less than during pregnancy). Your body will deplete your iron stores to maintain milk production, which is why postpartum anemia is so common.

Significantly More Omega-3 DHA - If you’re not getting enough DHA through diet, your body will literally draw it from your brain tissue. This is linked to the cognitive fog many breastfeeding mothers experience.

More Calcium - If dietary calcium is insufficient, your body draws from your bones and teeth to maintain milk calcium levels. This is why bone density can decrease during breastfeeding.

B Vitamins (especially B12 and Folate) - Critical for energy production and nervous system function - for both you and baby.

Zinc and Magnesium - These two are already tricky to get in sufficient amounts through our modern diet. 

Due to intensive farming practices and soil depletion, magnesium and zinc levels in our food have been dropping for decades. Yet they’re essential for immune function, healing, and hundreds of enzymatic processes in your body. 

So What Can We Do?

One thing we can do as mothers is take care of ourselves by taking a breastfeeding-specific supplement that fills in the gaps that modern life inevitably leaves.

My personal choice is Healthy Mama Happy Baba because it combines high-quality vitamins in their most bioavailable forms with organic superfoods and specially selected whole food ingredients. This creates the most bioavailable and effective supplement possible - real food, freeze-dried to maintain nutrients, delivered to your door ready to stir into one drink a day. Use code DANIELLE20 for 20% off.

A note on folate: Healthy Mama Happy Baba contains folate - the bioavailable form your body actually recognizes and can use efficiently - particularly important for mothers with MTHFR gene variations who struggle to convert synthetic folic acid.

You Deserve to Be Nourished Too

Breastfeeding is an act of profound generosity. Your body gives and gives - from your blood, your bones, your brain, your reserves - to create the most perfect food for your baby. But you cannot pour from an empty cup. And the world will not remind you of this. The world will expect you to just carry on, depleted and exhausted, as if what you’re doing is nothing.

It’s not nothing. It’s everything.

So please, mama - nourish yourself. Prioritize your wellness. Take the supplements. Eat the protein. Drink the water. Rest when you can. Ask for help. Your family needs you well. And you deserve to feel well - not just survive, but to actually thrive - for as long as you choose to breastfeed. The hidden cost of breastfeeding doesn’t have to be your health.

Shop Healthy Mama Happy Baba - use code DANIELLE20 for 20% off 

With love,

Danielle X Healthy Mama Happy Baba

❤️