Re: Introducing myself/breastfeeding question

[Guest guest]

Approx ten hours I think, but I may be wrong.

However what the mother eats isn't always the cause of colic,

sometimes it's the baby getting too much foremilk and not enough

hindmilk due to a less than optimum latch. The lactose in the

foremilk, not balanced with the fat in the hindmilk can lead to

colicky symptoms. If you want to talk about positioning email me

offlist.

Ruthie (BFC)

> Hi All,

>

> Just dropped in to ask a question. I have two girls one 4.5 years

> and one 14 weeks. I have forgotten a lot since the first one.

>

> Could anyone tell me how long it takes the food you eat to come

> through in breastmilk. It is proving impossible to track down the

> culprit for her colic without knowing the time span.

>

> Would be most grateful for any help with this.

>

> Janet

[Guest guest]

> Could anyone tell me how long it takes the food you eat to come

> through in breastmilk. It is proving impossible to track down the

> culprit for her colic without knowing the time span.

errr, Janet, the answer is.... it depends

In theory anything in blood can get into milk (I say in theory because many

molecules are too large to get into milk but we start with an assumptionm

that everything can iyswim)

So the question is how quickly will foodstuffs get into blood? And this

depends on lots of things - how much you have eaten, when you ate it, what

you ate it with etc.

Take alcohol - on an empty stomach it will get into your bloodstream almost

immediately, after a large meal it will take a long time - hours - to get in

The stomach takes about 4 hours to empty, not much is absorbed through the

stomach, most is absorbed by the small intestine. So absorbtion will take

minutes to hours and it is very difficult to be more precise.

And then the next question is - how long will it stay around - and we know

even less about this. We know about alcohol and we know about many drugs

because they have been studied but we don't know about most foodstuffs.

Not much help was I? Sorry

Sue Saxey

BFC