Only breastfeeding twice a day/toddler

lorierin22

I am currently weaning my daughter who is 13 months old. I nurse her once in the morning and usually 1-2 times at night. The rest of the time she is on whole milk and solid foods. Do I need to be counting any calories toward breastfeeding since I am doing it so little? I looked at the options to add and they look like they are subtracting 80 calories for each feeding. This seems like too much for me...so I just created my own and subtracted 75 calories for both feedings total. What do you think? I don't want to affect my supply, even though I am trying to work down to just the night time feeding anyway, but I definitely don't want to slip into starvation mode because I don't always eat back all of my exercise calories either. Thanks for any help you can give.

raisingbabyk

I would probably leave it like that but if you notice your supply start to drop then bring it back

maru84

I nurse all freakin' day long (my 7 month old is still 99% EBF) and I don't add very many calories- I stick with 1500 and don't count fruit and veggies, so I figure that gives me enough. If I added those 400-500 calories, I'd be gaining. I haven't had supply issues, and I've been losing, so it works for me. I'd just experiment and find what works for you.

theoddlittleduck

I nurse my 19 month old 1x a day (for about 30 minutes). I don't add the calories, but I'm not set super low anyway.

ljm0521

My son is breast feeding twice a day too. At this point (he's 18 months), I think it's more for comfort than anything else. I don't count it toward my goal.

Collinsky

It depends, I think that would be a bit of a trial-and-error thing. If you count it in, and lose the amount of weight you're set to lose - for instance, if you're set to lose 1 lb a week, and when you count in those calories and go by the new numbers you lose 1 lb, then it's 100% right. If you count them in and (with all other things being right, of course) you don't lose that pound, then it's too much.

My 20 month old nurses frequently, and I take off 375 cals a day and it is dead on accurate for the deficit. If he was only nursing twice a day, I don't know if I'd count that. I know when I tried to stop counting bfing cals, I was RAVENOUS and it was a big deterrent. So I went back to counting it. Maybe experiment for a week or so to see what happens?

If you don't count it, at this stage, it's not going to make a huge difference to you or your little one. It's a matter of personal preference.