Was wondering if anyone had any experience with eating spicy foods and how that affected breastfed child.
I eat a decent amount of spicy food. Never had an issue when bfeeding. Like another poster said, take note of gassy foods like cabbage instead of the spicy food. Think of all the women in other countries where extremely hot food is the norm -- their babies all get breastfed too and they continue to eat the spicy food.
I have nursed all 3 of my children and the only foods you need to steer away from are foods that usually make you gassy such as cabbage and other foods that may make you feel discomfort. Spicy is fine but if it's a spicy gravy then you may have an uncomfortable baby. good luck :-)
My daughter got gassy as a young infant (3 months and under) if I ate A LOT of garlic, but that was it. My son doesn't care what I eat. I ate spicy, strong foods throughout my pregnancies and all during breastfeeding. My daughter, now 2, loves spicy foods and ate Indian food at 11 months.
Overall, not really, which is good because I like my Thai. But I did find that if I ate too much fish she would get an upset tummy. Fish doesn't bother her now, by the way. I think that unless you see a definite cause and effect (with ANY food) you should just eat what you want to eat.
An interesting thing about nursing is that the kid gets a slightly different meal all the time, based on what you eat. Your child may (I say may because they don't all get the memo) be open to more new foods because he's been exposed to more.
I had no problem with spicy foods, but gassy foods, like brocolli or cabbage were a problem. Also, caffeine.
Eating spicy (or very flavorful foods) will change the taste of the breast milk. Some babies are more sensetive than others. I always paid attention to what I ate to see if baby reacted. And Maybe toned it down a little bit. But my kids were fine. They never had a noticeable reaction to anything I ate.
Neither of my children reacted any differently to spicy foods. I think it depends on the baby.
My son did react to a weekend cookie bender I went on once. His bowels were really loose for a few days until the cookie was out of my system.
I say try it! (If you want it.) One of the good things about breast feeding is supposed to be that the baby is exposed to different flavors which can *theoretically* make them more open to different foods later.
I think that it just depends on the child and his or her stomach tolerance. Adults have different reaction to spicy foods and babies do to. Some people cannot handle eating mildly spicy food without having negative reactions, and others can't get enough and don't have any problems at all. With my son, I had no problems with spicy foods and breastfeeding. I did eat spicy foods throughout my pregnancy though, and I think that makes a difference.
None of my 3 ever had a problem with it. I love curry and Mexican food and Indian food and all sorts of other yummy spicy things. I ate it my entire pregnancy and went on to continue to do so after they were born. All 3 of my kids love to eat it themselves too once they went on to eating solids.
I think it depends on the child and what they're used to maybe.
None of my three have ever cared one bit what I ate, at least not that I could tell.
I couldn't eat any kind of tomato sauce (spaghetti, lasagna, pizza, etc) when I was pregnant or nursing my youngest. Spicy was ok, acidic not so much!
Personally, I haven't had any problems with it. The only problems I had were with dairy, which we discovered very early on, and later, with gluten, because she has Celiac disease. So, still nursing at 16 months, and I'm on a fairly restricted diet. However, this child LOVES broccoli, spinach, and spicy foods, so I'm really grateful I'm not stuck eating fruit and rice.
Spicy food = unhappy baby almost 100% of the time. Ditto for very gassy foods like cabbage, beans, etc.
