11/06/2022
Breastmilk does not lose nutritional value after baby turns 6 months old. 👶🏻🤱
A common misconception is that the need to introduce solid foods is linked in some way to breast milk changing or becoming insufficient in some way. This simply isn’t true.
It doesn't turn to water (err, what would that mechanism be?! Breastmilk is created from your blood - it's not like there's a set store of milk when your baby is born)
It doesn't lose nutritional value (it increases in fat as your baby gets older)
It doesn't stop protecting them (it increases in
some immune properties to meet the needs of a mobile baby)
The reason solid foods need to be introduced is to firstly meet the needs of a baby that is growing and will continue to grow. Introducing solids should be a gradual process so if anything early solids are more about setting the scene for later months when a baby will be larger and need more energy.
Generally speaking, breastmilk contain enough nutrients of things like iron and zinc to meet a baby's needs until six months. But at six months a baby will need to have some of these nutrients from other foods ... but it's not because breastmilk has changed.
Rather, it is because breastmilk was never designed to deliver all the micronutrients a baby needs forever. Instead, babies are born with stores of certain minerals, such as iron and zinc, and gradually use these up over the first few months, being ‘topped up’ by minerals in breastmilk or formula.
By about six months these stores are running low, so the baby needs to start eating solid foods, which contain nutrients such as iron in greater amounts.
But during later infancy and beyond it is still a great food. It provides lots of energy, calcium, protein and macronutrients for as long as you continue feeding them.
So breastmilk is still breastmilk. It still continues to deliver a whole load of nutrition to your baby, for however long you feed them 🙌
