Weight gain and breastfeeding.

[magnoliasmama]

I seem to be one of those women who gain weight while breastfeeding. I came home from the hospital about 10 pounds heavier than pre-pregnancy, and I was totally excited. I figured 10 pounds would be easy to loose. This definitely wasn't the case. Within a month or two I gained 15 pounds. Sixteen months later I'm still trying to figure out how to shed my now twenty pounds of breastfeeding weight. Nothing I do seems to work. We go on lots of walks, bike rides, and jogs. We spent the summer outdoors hiking and swimming in rivers. We don't eat junk or processed food. Admittedly, my exercise schedule has lacked consistency, but in general our family lives an active lifestyle. And now, my stretchmarks are getting longer. My stomach becomes big and bloated in the evenings and I look pregnant all over again. My weight hasn't changed in months, but my stomach looks bigger and I'm getting new stretchmarks. I don't get it.

I feel so dumpy and uncomfortable all the time. I've even avoided pictures with my family because I feel so self conscious.

Has anyone else out there overcome the tendency to gain breast feeding weight? What can I do to end this without weaning?

[ewe+lamb]

I could have written your post - I remember all these women saying how much weight they lost weeks after giving birth and I was heavier - goodness I felt awful, I felt like I had been cheated and to be honest the weight has never given way until just now - I won't tell you how many years - and my son isn't nursing so much. I, like you, have a healthy diet, take reasonable exercise - probably not as much as I should be but it's exercise all the same! However, I do let women know in our LLL meetings that not all women loose weight whilst breastfeeding - I think everyone should know that before blanket statements are made and then you feel like a failure or worse because you're not like everyone else!

[lifeguard]

Yeah, every time I see/hear of women complaining/celebrating how they "just can't eat enough" & they "just keep losing weight" it makes me want to cry. My doctor yesterday actually told me to just give up on losing weight until I'm done my family - how depressing.

[annekh23]

I'm the same, I struggle to gain weight in pregnancy, lose it all put about 5lb by giving birth. With my first I didn't gain weight, but I was depressed and had low milk supply. With my 2nd I gained back all my pregnancy weight within about 6 weeks, had plenty of milk, then stayed stable for a while, longer than I'd like, before beginning to lose it when she was 18 months, which was when she stopped nursing, but I think it was other factors. This time it's been even worse, I got depressed during the pregnancy, that, along with the pressure on my stomach from the baby meant I had a really low appetite at the end of pregnancy, I didn't weigh myself after the birth, but I must have been close to my prepregnancy weight. Then my appetite returned and with my depressed mood I swung too far in the opposite direction and one of the meds I was on for the depression had weight gain as a side effect and I piled on all the pregnancy weight and then some more, becoming the biggest I've ever been. I struggle with body image anyway, so this is really hard for me, I do seem to have levelled off and maybe am even losing some, I came of the med that wasn't helping last week and my appetite has really dropped, but now I'm going to have to be careful that it doesn't drop too far and hit my milk supply!

[magnoliasmama]

There has to be a way. I've stepped up my cardio efforts. I've been jogging or walking for an hour every morning. I think building back some of the muscle mass lost during pregnancy would help too. I'm hoping that losing weight will just require more effort than when I'm not breastfeeding, and that the task is not impossible.

I'm not sure what to do diet-wise. Will going low fat affect my milk supply? I've always had tons of milk, but my daughter is small and very lean. She still gets a large portion of calories from my milk. I don't want to mess around with her food supply. I get stressed out over her size enough as it is.



annekh23... I had a hard time eating while I was pregnant too. After realizing we were pregnant, I started following the dietary recommendations of my midwives. I ate lean meats, veggies, fruit, dairy, and whole grains. One by one I had to eliminate problem foods out of my diet either due to heartburn or nausea. First the grains gave me extreme heartburn. Then meat started making me vomit. By the end of the pregnancy I was living on protein shakes, dairy products and raw fruits and vegetables. I couldn't eat anything fried, overly cooked, or processed. I drank tons of water. Even though I lost a lot of variety, we managed to keep my diet very well balanced. I ended up developing pre-eclampsia and HELLP during labor and my postpartum period. In retrospect, I think the nausea was a symptom of mild pre-eclampsia that had been brewing for the last two months of my pregnancy.

I've often wondered if the extreme nausea, pre-eclampsia, and HELLP syndrome has seriously slowed my metabolism.

[wbg]

I completely relate. I am struggling again this time. Basically, for me no matter what I do, I carry around extra weight until I stop BFing. My shape is also totally different. The last time it took about 6 mths after I stopped to get my body back, but there was a significant improvemet just 6 to 8 weeks after I stopped.

With this bub, I decided to try and eat super healthy and exercise very early on to try and prevent it. I started being super strict when she was 3 months old and I got nothing. I ate only low fat or fat free organic, no bread, wheat grains, no soda, no sugary treats etc. Seriously, it was very disheartening. I still just stayed almost exactly the same weight. And yes, I was exercising regularly.

I do not know what the science is. But for me, my body seems to retain fat the entire time I feed. I was just about to post in here about getting moral support to keep going as I find this age 18 mths exhausting and overwhelming and plus my physical image sucks and I want my body back!! wah!!! okay tantrum over!

So nothing constructive to say but a big hug to you Mama.

[LianneM]

I can't lose it either, though I admit I am not as good about exercise as I should be. I tend to just maintain, though, no matter how much I eat. It's like my body is in starvation mode, holding on to every calorie it can. It's very hard and frustrating. I've avoided being in pics, also, but at this point I'm 4.5 years in and I don't want to be absent from my children's lives in pictures, so I'm just declaring it my mama body and I hope my metabolism steps back up some once I'm done nursing (whenever the heck that will be).