A self-published book about the way foods influence milk composition -- Truly excellent

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Product Description

This alternative medicine and traditional foods, how-to-cookbook and herbal is recommended by lactation consultants and approved by the La Leche League International Book Evaluation Committee.

Written in an easy-to-read style, the guidelines and supplements discussed in "Mother Food" are similar to those used by MDs in the treatment of autism and ADHD. Boosting mother and baby's immune systems and facilitating gentle detoxification positions the mother and baby for a lifetime of ultra health.

Drawing on traditional nutrition, and describing simple, whole-foods cooking techniques, "Mother Food" has become a reference for nutritionists, lactation consultants, and all those who assist mothers in the postpartum period with protocols for low milk supply, infant colic, anemia, thyroid issues, postpartum depression, yeast issues, foggy mindedness, food sensitivities, weight gain and weight loss, and much more.

A book like this is hard to find. A rarity. Information is clearly described in a warm, supportive tone, making it accessible and non-threatening - so important for first-time mothers.

* Discover recipes to increase and maintain an abundant milk supply, to promote the let-down reflex, and increase the healthy fat content of breastmilk, along with other immune factors.
* Learn guidelines for the detective work involved in eliminating so-called "trigger foods" that may be the cause of a baby's colic, insomnia, eczema, or other distress
* Practice basic detox and chelation - gentle enough for the breastfeeding period
* Balance your blood-sugar, develop vitality, overcome fatigue
* Say good-bye to food cravings, lose weight, and maintain a healthy weight level without the yo-yo effect
* Increase your clear-mindedness and increase the IQ-enhancing components of your breastmilk

In addition, "Mother Food" describes insights from breastfeeding traditions of eastern cultures and ancient medicine, and provides an herbal with dosages and preparations for galactagogues.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #963628 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 344 pages

Review
A world of possibilities will open for you when you read Mother Food: Food and Herbs That Promote Milk Production and a Mother's Health. There's a wide range of tips, from learning to recognize food sensitivities to using foods and herbs to help build a milk supply. One chapter focuses on supporting digestion, preventing allergies, and lowering the body's toxic load. As well as providing ways of using foods and herbs to promote health, the author offers recipes for basic whole food cooking as well as recipes for lactogenic foods -- which is just a fancy way of saying foods good for helping a body make milk! Today's mothers, and all family cooks and food shoppers, can benefit by the down-to-earth, practical, and easy-to-use information about herbs and foods.

Mother Food is a good general guide for mothers who want to know more about herbs and how foods can affect health. The author takes a refreshing approach to eating, recommending wholesome foods according to how they suit one's particular digestion, and selecting foods that support lactation. Much of the information in the book could help mothers spot potential diet-related problems, such as allergies and food sensitivities. For example, did you know that, according to allergists, a diet focused on one food may eventually lead to a deficiency in the enzyme needed to digest that particular food? Consequently, undigested food molecules pass through the intestines and set up an allergic reaction. Consider a mother drinking gallons of milk, for example, because it is considered to be a healthy food, only to suffer from symptoms of sinus pain and earaches and her breastfed baby suffers along with colic, too. Recognizing how food makes her feel could change her life!

Mother Food is an especially valuable book for those who have a partial or overabundant milk supply. Hilary Jacobson's years of personal research have been driven by her efforts to bolster her own faltering milk supply. Hilary has four children and had an incomplete milk supply for her first child for many weeks. She also found that her supply was very sensitive, and would decrease easily. As she read and learned more, she was able to produce a sufficient milk supply for her babies, which took less effort to maintain with each child. She found that certain foods and herbs helped her to keep it steady, and this book is her way of sharing what she has learned with other mothers. Inspired by the grief of struggling with her milk supply, and the excitement of overcoming her difficulties, Hilary became a champion for mothers who are growing their babies with love and as much milk as they can manage to make.

Once a mother has tried all the basic strategies for increasing her production and still cannot achieve the relationship she craves or the milk supply she needs, she may feel cut adrift and alone in her sorrow. Mothers facing struggles similar to those of Hilary battle with feelings of failure, frustration, and grief. A mother coping with breastfeeding problems needs a mentor as she might be facing other issues such as depression and/or health issues for her and/or her baby. Furthermore, she might be emotionally vulnerable to every perceived criticism. This book is a soothing tonic for a mother's weary heart and it offers hope as well. With this helpful manual in hand, a mother can focus on preserving her breastfeeding relationship, and celebrating every drop of human milk her body can make for her baby. The book is also loaded with encouragement and information to promote a better understanding of breastfeeding problems, especially as they relate to a lactogenic diet.

Mother Food is well researched with wisdom from India to China, from the medical records of the Greek doctor Discorides in the first century, to the results from an Iowa Women's Health Study about coffee, tea, and caffeine consumption and the risk of rheumatoid arthritis. Whether you are interested in exploring herbs to help with skin rashes or depression, or foods for a low milk supply, you will find what you need in this book. --New Beginnings, Vol. 24 No. 4, July-August 2007, p. 180

From the Publisher
Expert Reviews:

Linda Folden Palmer, DC, author of "Baby Matters" and "The Baby Bond":

Jacobson covers a wide array of pertinent topics in this book, with an excellent understanding of the current spectrum of maternal, lactation professional, and science knowledge (each of which seem to have gaps between them), and adds lots of insightful and fun historic and anthropologic information along the way.

She's raised my own consciousness in my own favorite directions: just how intimately and distinctly our food choices affect us.

Something to bring to the beach for pleasure reading if you have ANY interest in infant feeding; really. A must-read for lactation professionals, and for breastfeeding mothers with any challenges at all. My dream to see pediatricians read.

Diana West, BA, IBCLC, author of "Defining your Own Success: Breastfeeding After Breast Reduction Surgery" and "Making More Milk":

"A book about the way foods influence milk composition - truly excellent."

Lisa Marasco, MA, IBCLC, author of "Making More Milk":

"What we eat CAN matter. `Mother Food' is a wonderful collection of historical traditions from cultures around the world and what they feed mothers to support good health, breastfeeding, and plentiful milk production. Hilary Jacobson has put years of research into pulling together information that has almost been lost to the western world; every mother will benefit from reading this book, as well as anyone who works with or supports breastfeeding mothers."

Cheryl R. Scott, RN, IBCLC, Ph.D.:

"This book is a `must read' book for all pregnant and breastfeeding mothers along with their health care providers. Mrs. Jacobson provides information on how to avoid allergies, how to lower a mother's toxic load, how to prevent over-detoxification while breastfeeding, how to prevent infant colic, postpartum depression, anemia, insulin resistance, food cravings and food addictions along with how to promote and create a healthy milk supply. I love all of the helpful and yummy recipes sprinkled throughout the book."

Sheila Humphrey, RSC, RN, IBCLC, author of "Nursing Mothers Herbal":

"I like `Mother Food's' independent originality. Reading `Mother Food' is like entering a garden with intriguing viewpoints and a number of paths that invite further exploration. One's imagination is given permission to run rampant within beautifully arranged beds of knowledge that reveal themselves slowly along the meandering but manicured paths. For many restricted to thinking only with evidence-based information, reading the book will be like finding an inviting gate leading out of a walled city." 


About the Author
Hilary Jacobson was faced by a conundrum: serious low milk supply with each of her four children. A student of nutrition and herbalism since her teens, she now learned about herbs and foods used traditionally in Europe, Asia, by Native Americans and in Africa to increase milk supply, the so-called 'galactagogues.' These enabled her to maintain an abundant milk supply.

Jacobson: "This knowledge felt like a birthright. I thought all mothers should know it is possible to gain a degree of control over your body's ability to produce milk and your baby's ability to digest it. It is impossible to imagine how crucial these two things are unless you are a mother dealing with these issues."

When Jacobson learned that mothers in many cultures do in fact pass down this knowledge through the generations, and that it has been lost only in western culture, she resolved to write a book that would return this knowledge to western women.

Hilary Jacobson was born in California. She is a music teacher and writer, and lived thirty years in Switzerland where she raised her four children. She now lives in Southern California where she is writing the Mother Food Books Series.

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Customer Reviews

Can I give it 6 stars???
It's been over a decade since I've nursed and this topic is a slightly on the edge of my writing and consulting areas so why did I buy the book? I ran across the title accidentally and guess I was mostly interested in how someone could write a whole text about fenugreek, a few other herbs, and a couple of drugs. Maybe I just wanted to see if the book was just silliness. Well, zowie, even if you've been consulting in lactation for many years and read "all" the books, there's a multitude of interesting and juicy meat in this book (and there's a lot more than "a few other herbs"). She covers a wide array of pertinent topics, with an excellent understanding of the current spectrum of maternal, lactation professional, and science knowledge (each of which often seem to have large gaps between them), and adds lots of insightful and fun historic and anthropologic information along the way.

She's raised my own consciousness in my own favorite directions: just how intimately and distinctly our food choices affect us.

Something to bring to the beach for pleasure reading if you have ANY interest in infant feeding; really. A must-read for lactation professionals, and for breastfeeding mothers with any challenges at all. My dream to see pediatricians read.

Linda Folden Palmer, DC, author of "Baby Matters" and "The Baby Bond" The Baby Bond: The New Science Behind What's Really Important When Caring for Your Baby

A great resource for breastfeeding mothers
As a mother and medical writer, I highly recommend this fascinating book. It addresses a wide range of issues, but it is also a good read, and easy to understand. It is a great resource for any breastfeeding mother and a useful reference book for health workers such as midwives, breastfeeding councellors and doctors.

There is extensive information on foods and herbs that are used in different cultures to support a mothers milk production (galactagogues) and general health. A lot of the foods you will find already in your kitchen. This book is particularly useful if you have concerns over your milk supply (whether you are nursing or pumping) and looks at oversupply as well as undersupply, and at supply problems that are less well known, such as premenstrual reduction of milk production. There are numerous tips and recipes that can help you regulate your milk supply.

Other problems that also face nursing mothers are addressed (e.g. weightgain, post natal depression, blocked milk ducts, thrush and mastitis) along with appropriate dietary measures, foods, herbs and supplements for their treatment. More general problems of colds, allergies, fatigue and asthma are also discussed. There are also sections which describe foods and herbs (both to take and to avoid) that are useful in treating colic and reflux in your baby. The book has a comprehensive contents page and is clearly indexed so it is quick to find the information you need. The book is well referenced with a listing including peer-reviewed literature and book titles - great if you want to do some further reading.

As a mother who had some undersupply problems following a breast abscess, I can say that the information contained in this book very possibly saved my nursing relationship with my daughter. I would strongly recommend this book to any woman who is breastfeeding, thinking about breastfeeding or pumping milk for her baby.

Don't give up because your breastmilk is low!
Many women who experience the natural waxing and waning of breastmilk feel that they must be drying up and needlesly wean their babies too early. Hilary Jacobson shows how foods and herbs can increase milk production through natural cyclic changes as well as those brought about by medication, illness and stress. She doesn't simply present lists of galactogues (breatmilk enhancing foods and herbs) she talks about the energetics of them. For instance nigella seeds, used in the Mideast to enhance breastmilk, may be too warming for regular consumption unless a woman runs cold, and fennel may be a better choice. She discusses ways of determining what allergens may go through the breastmilk and bother the baby- even showing how they can be detected prenatally. Finally she covers foods that mother the mother. This is an excellent resource and I have no trouble recommending it to my patients.