by Anne Eglash MD, IBCLC, FABM
How much water should a breastfeeding mother drink? There are many factors that determine the amount of fluid that a person needs, such as body weight, level of activity, sweating, ambient temperature, dietary intake (soup vs salty crackers!), illness such as diarrhea, etc. Typical advice has been to drink according to thirst, but unfortunately some women do not have great ‘thirst mechanisms’ and they look for guidance. In addition to the risk of dehydration, chronic insufficient fluid intake can lead to chronic kidney disease, constipation, low energy, and difficulty with blood sugar control.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association recommends a urine color chart for athletes to assess adequate hydration. A group of researchers wanted to know if this same urine color chart could be used to assess hydration in pregnant and nursing mothers. They collected urine from women during their pregnancy and lactation and compared the urine color with the typical lab measures that are used to determine hydration status, such as urine osmolality.
What do you think is accurate about breastfeeding and assessing fluid intake, according to these researchers? Choose 1 or more:
- Breastfeeding women lose approximately 400-800ml of water through their breastmilk each day.
- Breastfeeding women tend to have darker urine than athletes with the same hydration status because of breastmilk proteins excreted into urine.
- A urine color chart is an accurate, simple tool to guide a breastfeeding mother on her hydration status.
- A urine color chart should not be used for breastfeeding women because if she keeps her urine as dilute as an athlete’s, her milk will become too dilute with water.
Basma Ismail
Very informative
Mary
Very interesting! Thanks for sharing. Please also emphasize that women do not need to overhydrate. A friend told me her milk supply was dropping – she had been told it was important to drink lots of water, and as her supply dropped, she was working on drinking more water. I can’t remember how much she was drinking, but it was a very large amount. I told her I had read that overhydration could negatively impact milk supply and that perhaps she could try cutting back so that urine was dilute, but that she wasn’t forcing herself to drink so much. (She was already feeding as soon as home from work, spending extra time skin to skin on the weekends, etc.) Her milk supply increased when she decreased her fluid intake, but monitored to make sure urine was light color.
Hend Fayez
very informative
Ruth
The urine color chart for athletes seems like a good way to reminded of proper fluid intake for a breastfeeding mother. However, many mothers take some sort of vitamin or supplement that may cause the color to change thus making this an unreliable measure.
Anne Eglash
Yes, some supplements, particularly high dose vitamin B supplements, are well known to cause a major change to urine color. I am not aware that a large % breastfeeding mothers are taking vitamins that markedly distort the color of their urine.