Postpartum Nutrition Matters More Than You Might Think

Ceridwen

Welcome back to the Postpartum Prep Podcast. My name is Ceridwen. I'm your podcast host and your guide to preparing for a smoother start to life with your new baby.

Today on the Postpartum Prep Podcast, we are joined by Lily Nichols, who is going to speak with us about preparing for postpartum nutrition. Lily is a registered dietitian, researcher and author with a passion for evidence-based prenatal nutrition. She is the founder of the Institute for Prenatal Nutrition, co-founder of the Women's Health Nutrition Academy, and the author of three books, Real Food for Fertility, co-authored with Lisa Hendricks and Jack, Real Food for Pregnancy, and Real Food for Gestational Diabetes.

Lily's best-selling books have helped hundreds of thousands of mamas, including me, as well as our babies, and are used in university-level maternal nutrition and midwifery courses, and have even influenced prenatal nutrition policy internationally. I know many of you listening are so excited to have Lily on today, as am I. So without further ado, welcome to the Postpartum Prep Podcast, Lily.

Lily

Thanks so much for having me.

Ceridwen

We are all so excited to have you here today. Here on the Postpartum Prep Podcast, our focus is on helping pregnant mamas who have never experienced postpartum before to prepare for life after birth.

So just to start off this episode, can you give us a bit of an overview about why it even matters to be thinking about preparing for nutrition after birth?

Lily

Well, I mean, I have two kids myself, so I've been through postpartum twice, which has certainly informed my work in this area. But I think so much emphasis is put on preparing for the birth or for eating well during pregnancy, and postpartum kind of gets forgotten about. And many women don't realize that actually your nutrient needs are even higher postpartum than they were during pregnancy.

And this is true for many different nutrients, and certainly also the volume of food that you need to nourish yourself, particularly if you're nursing. It's a very energy-intensive endeavor. And if you're going into postpartum a little bit blind, as many of us do, I mean, I know I did, even knowing what I know, I still went into my first postpartum underprepared.

Food-wise, you kind of can't anticipate when it's your first baby how little time without an infant in your arms you will have, how you maybe won't have the wherewithal or energy or whatever to get into the kitchen and be cooking again, right? So if you can do some preparation ahead of time or have some sort of a plan for how food is going to make it to you, like in many cultures, you have an older female family member cook for you, maybe that's your mom, your mother-in-law, your auntie, your grandma, your whoever, friends and family, people do meal trains or a meal delivery service, even something where the food is coming to you. So it's something taken off of your mental load because you are really in like a, it's a 24-7 job and you kind of like arrive to it pretty much instantly.

And so if you have some expectation of I'm not really going to be in a place where I'm cooking for myself right now, whether that's prepping food in advance or having people help you out, it really, really goes a long way into helping with your recovery.

Ceridwen

Yeah, I think I, when I was a first-time mom, I had no idea how impactful nutrition was when it came to recovery. And I love that you mentioned also that the nutrition needs of postpartum can actually be higher than pregnancy. That was something I was completely blindsided by.

Can you explain to us why this is and kind of what the differences are between the nutritional demands of pregnancy versus postpartum?

Lily

Yeah, and I think many women are surprised by this, right? So in pregnancy, we have higher energy and nutrient demands, higher protein needs. Postpartum, those actually go up even further.

So you have, I mean, people kind of understand, OK, if you're nursing, your energy needs are going to be higher because it takes energy to make milk. However, this is true regardless of whether you're breastfeeding or not. Like after you have a baby, you've just gone through the most incredible biological feat ever of growing a brand new human being.

So your nutrient reserves are at an all-time low. We need to replenish those. You've just gone through birth.

And depending on how birth went down, you know, whether it was a physiologic birth or a surgical birth, either way, there's a lot of energy used up in that process and or energy needed to recover from birth. So say you had like a, you know, you were in labor for a day or two or maybe even longer, that's like running a marathon or several marathons and you need to replenish the energy burned during that process. If you had a surgical birth.

You just had major abdominal surgery and you have, you know, additional wound healing that needs to take place, some women also will tear or have an episiotomy that takes nutrients and resources and protein to heal those tissues. So there's just a time of a lot of healing. And then you add lactation on top of it and that adds to it even more.

So like the energy demands of postpartum are much higher than they are during pregnancy itself. The protein demands are higher. We finally have data on this.

It was done. It was a study done in women at three to six months postpartum who are exclusively breastfeeding. Their protein needs were higher than a typical female athlete.

And those protein needs exceeded third trimester protein needs, which many people assumed, well, you can't get more than that when you have a baby grown in your body. No, actually the, the protein demands do increase postpartum. And you have to think that study was done at three to six months out.

So what are we looking at, at the zero to three months? I'd love to see a study in zero to two weeks, right? That's like really when a lot of the healing and inflammation and all that stuff is going on.

Um, so aim high with protein. Okay. Um, you would not be, you would not be wrong to be aiming for approximately a gram per pound of body weight, which is a lot.

Um, when you're hitting your protein needs, especially if you're getting omnivorous sources of protein, protein, plant, plant, and animal sources, then you're more likely to be hitting the higher vitamin and mineral demands that are happening postpartum as well. So our choline needs increase or vitamin a needs increase. Um, uh, vitamin B 12 is a big one.

Iodine increases. There's many micronutrients where our needs actually increase. And a lot of that is, um, specific to the extra nutrients that you're excreting in breast milk.

But even if you're not nursing, I really still encourage people focus on replenishing their nutrient stores in those first six months postpartum. Because again, you've just, you've just, you know, transferred as many nutrients as possible to growing your baby. Like our biology is wired to give whatever we can to baby's needs and that can deplete you of some nutrients.

So, you know, your DHA and omega-3 fat is depleted because that was preferentially sent to baby for brain development. Your calcium stores are depleted because that was sent to baby for bone development, right. And so on and so forth, you know, you can, you can extrapolate that to many different nutrients.

So that's some of the reasons of, you know, the why behind it. Um, even without getting into the weeds, you could just expect that you need more food and the more emphasis you put on nutritious nutrient dense foods, the better, because then you're not only hitting, you know, the higher energy demands, but also kind of filling those, those nutrient gaps as well.

Ceridwen

Yeah. I, I, I learned firsthand the downfall of not really focusing on replenishing those nutrients. And for me, even like 18 months down the line, I was still completely like chronically fatigued and I ended up having blood tests done and all these nutrients I had to start taking supplements just because I was so depleted.

Um, and that's, I, that's kind of how I came to learn about you. Um, I wish that I had learned about you before I had given birth your book, um, real food for pregnancy. I have it now and I'm like, this would have been so helpful.

So anyone listening should definitely check out your book. Um, I wanted to, I wanted to ask you specifically about breastfeeding nutrition, but I kind of wanted to just touch on something that you had mentioned about an omnivorous diet. Is that compared to like a plant-based diet or like a carnivore diet kind of, um, what are your, what's kind of your take there?

Lily

Yeah. So omnivorous means you eat both animals and plants. Um, my opinion is you're getting the best of both worlds eating that way.

I mean, you look across the world and you don't find a free living, entirely vegan population that is able to self-sustain its population for very long. Um, you will see pockets of almost carnivore. If you go to extremes of latitudes, like really cold climates, you know, if you go all the way up to the North of Alaska and Greenland, they're getting a very small proportion of their diet from plants, uh, simply because you're in the dead of winter for a very long portion of the year, you don't have sun up there.

So what do you rely on? Um, whatever you gathered in the summer and preserved and then whatever animal foods you can hunt or fish. Um, but you know, vast majority of humans are in climates where they're eating a mix of both.

So the animal foods become essential for a number of different nutrients that we simply don't find in plants or don't find in the right quantities or forms in plant foods to fulfill our needs. So there's many different amino acids, um, that we are not finding in plant foods. And for people listening, yes, I'm aware you can combine plant proteins, create a so-called complete protein, but it goes beyond just the so-called essential amino acids.

There are, um, a number of amino acids that they call non-essential, even though that's never scientifically been proven to be accurate, that we actually do need for optimal health and we do need to provide in times of stress and I consider the times of reproduction, pregnancy, as well as postpartum and lactation as times of increased nutritional stress. So you do want to be having a dietary source of amino acids like taurine and creatine and carnitine that you only find in animal foods. On top of that, you just lost a whole bunch of blood at birth.

Even if you didn't have a postpartum hemorrhage, you lose blood at birth. Um, and so we need to be getting as much bioavailable sources of iron and also blood building nutrients. So iron B12, um, riboflavin, folate, B6, glycine, methionine, on and on vitamin A that you're getting primarily, or in some cases only in animal foods.

So we want to be like rebuilding our, our blood. Um, but you also do want plant foods as well. Like there are things that we get mostly or only in plants.

Um, vitamin C we get for the most part, mostly in plants. So you get a high concentrations of folate, mostly in plants. You're going to kind of struggle to hit your potassium needs if you're only eating animal foods and not eating plants.

So, you know, you want a balance of both there's, there's benefit to our microbiome and our digestion and everything and having some fiber in there as well. So, you know, we're getting our fiber from plant foods. So I think the, the best balance to make sure you're not depleted in something or creating some other, you know, metabolic issues would be to have a balance of both personally.

Um, I know some people do kind of end up on the extremes. My recommendation is you're just, you know, checking in with a health professional or getting necessary labs. If you do fall into either of the, um, dietary extremes.

Ceridwen

Yeah, I think actually I should give some context to, I kind of mentioned about my journey with, um, like feeling very depleted postpartum. And I, in the five years running up to pregnancy had been vegan. And then I was vegetarian until I was about six months postpartum.

So all throughout pregnancy and early postpartum I'd been vegetarian. Um, and I kind of started eating meat actually when my son started solids, cause I was just like, I wanted him to eat meat and I didn't want to cook two meals. And I did start to feel much better.

Um, and then when I kind of came to you and I saw this post that you had done about how just, um, you know, I feel like one of like the things that was very misleading to me when I was pregnant was about, you know, you'd see things like iron or B12 and you'd read like, oh, it's in these foods. So I would eat these foods that it said it was in, but it was this post that I've seen of yours kind of showed like the levels of, for example, iron in me versus the levels in these supposedly like high iron plant-based foods, but just how comparatively low it really was in iron. Um, and I think it's, it was quite misleading to me when I was pregnant to think that I was eating these really high iron foods, but that was just because it was like high iron for a plant-based food and obviously I know maybe you can explain a little bit as well about the difference in types of iron, I think, um, between plant-based versus.

Lily

Yeah. I think what you're referring to, I put out an article on my website and I also, of course, shared it to social media on, um, iron, not only the iron content of plant versus animal foods, but how much you actually absorb. So the form of iron in animal foods is called heme iron.

The form in plant foods is called non heme iron. So in animal foods, it's bound to protein and it's highly bioavailable to your body. Um, so what I did in that article is I, cause I've had similar qualms with, with this issue, you know, working as a clinician, I, when I started in a perinatal office, I like inherited all the handouts from the, from the prior dietician and the handout on iron had almost all plant foods and like in the bottom, there was a few animal foods.

So I'd like, you know, the spinach and the black beans and the raisins and whatever, and I'm like, well, really how much iron is actually in here and how much do you actually absorb? And when you start to dig into it, you're really not absorbing the vast majority of plant form iron. So not only is it lower concentration, but it's a lot less bioavailable because I kept having vegetarian clients come back terribly anemic, despite.

Including all the iron rich foods and doing all the right things. It was like, this isn't working for them clearly. Um, and then of course, you know, if you go the route of supplementation, conventionally, you're often put on really poorly, poor bioavailability forms of iron, which is a whole separate, um, topic.

So anyways, in that article, I was trying to like communicate not only to women themselves, but also other healthcare professionals who are educating on this, that like, you can't just like give a list of iron rich foods and have like spinach and raisins on there and have that be equivalent to animal sources of iron. They just don't move the needle on, you know, iron stores and, and iron labs the way that you would expect. So we created a whole bunch of like infographics that show you the comparative amount of iron between separate, um, animal and plant foods.

And then from the perspective of absorption, if you wanted to match like, okay, we're absorbing, you know, one milligram of iron from this animal food. And we want to absorb one milligram of iron from this plant food. What is the portion size of those foods actually needed to get you to that point?

And you'll see that it becomes rather, you know, kind of comical looking at the plant food options.

Ceridwen

Yeah. Like 50, 50 heads of broccoli to have like one or 50 cups of broccoli for like one steak or something like that.

Lily

Yeah. Yeah. Like one burger patty or something like that.

Yeah, exactly. It's it, people can look up the post. If you just go to my website, lillynicholsrdn.com search iron, that article should come right up and you could see the graphics we're talking about. But yeah, I think it was a helpful visual for people to kind of understand because, you know, I, I was a former vegetarian. I have many loved ones who are vegetarian and vegan. So I understand all the reasons for and against eating animal foods.

And I'm really honestly very compassionate for people's choices in that area. It's just, I want people to kind of understand what are the nutritional trade-offs because what I've seen is a lot of the resources advocating for a vegetarian diet or saying that it's adequate in pregnancy and breastfeeding. They're not getting into the details enough to adequately communicate.

Like what, what does it take to actually get to consuming enough iron from plant foods? And again, if you just look clinically at what we see with, you know, serum iron and ferritin and anemia rates and vegetarians versus omnivores, it just, it's suboptimal. It's a suboptimal choice in terms of keeping your nutrient status where you want to see it.

And I do see it, especially in moms. Maybe you can get through like that one vegetarian pregnancy and then postpartum usually you, you crash out after a period of time because you're just, your body gave everything to that baby and now you're really depleted. So I hear a lot of stories like yours actually, which is why I go into those controversial topics in my books.

I have a section on vegetarian diets and real food for pregnancy, kind of calling out what the nutrients of concern are and why. And if you still choose to stay vegetarian areas to optimize and supplement and also supporting those who choose not to stay vegetarian. And in my third book, real food for fertility, we decided to have like a whole separate chapter on it because it felt like it, it kind of warranted it at this point.

Yeah.

Ceridwen

Yeah. I was going to mention your book, real food for pregnancy and the section on kind of vegetarianism in there because that was really helpful for me even just to see, because it's not just like you can't be vegetarian, but there are like very practical kind of, well, for this nutrient, you're going to need to maybe try these foods or like the reality is maybe for certain nutrients, it's going to be really, really hard. But, um, and I think just that's how you support like informed choice rather than just these pamphlets that are like, just eat some beans and spinach.

Right. Right. Um, I wanted to move into talking about nutritional nutrition for breastfeeding.

So I did a, your women's health nutrition Academy, um, the course you have about nutrition for breastfeeding. And I was completely floored by just realizing, you know, I think you hear a lot in some senses, I'm sure. Um, we don't want to like scare moms into thinking, you know, your breast milk is always the best thing for your baby.

Um, and all the research that's done on the benefits between breast milk versus formula, um, does support breast milk no matter kind of what your nutrient intake. Um, but at the same time, there are certain nutrients that it can matter about your intake, um, for your breast milk. So, and I was just completely surprised by that when I learned that in your course.

So I was wondering if you could just give us a little bit more information on that for any pregnant moms who are listening and they're planning to breastfeed what they might need to know before they give birth and maybe how they can get prepared.

Lily

Yeah. So, I mean, the, the advice that I got when I was nursing and I'll, I'll say that, you know, I worked with a really fantastic dietitian, IBCLC, you know, some of the best trained lactation consultants out there, um, who is fabulous. Uh, and she said something to me that just like didn't, didn't sit right, which was that, well, you know, it really doesn't matter what you eat.

Baby's going to get everything that they need from your milk. And it's like, okay. I mean, that kind of makes sense.

Except when you start looking at all the data on, you know, the way that we, the way that farmers, um, supplement their cows with special rations when they're breastfeeding or, you know, lactating. Um, of course, like the dairy industry has a vested interest in making sure that the milk is, is, um, flowing well, right. And is also adequate in nutrition.

So there's all sorts of research on dairy animals about like what they do to fortify their diet to make sure that their milk is of highest quality. And when you start digging into the human research, there's not as much on it, but I'd say the last 10, 15 years, we've seen a lot more looking at the difference in nutritional quality of human breast milk based on diet or nutrient intake or nutrient status even, um, of the mom. And so not all nutrients, not all micronutrients, meaning vitamins and minerals are going to be substantially altered by maternal intake.

Some of them stay relatively constant, but that's really the exception to the rule. Most of the micronutrients do vary based on maternal intake and diet. And there's actually like a lot of research on it.

Um, so even though it's controversial and we don't want to be scaring moms and certainly you don't have to eat perfectly or like withhold breastfeeding and give formula on a day where you don't eat well, like that's not the message we're trying to communicate here. I'm looking at it from the standpoint of, okay, this is like one more reason we want to prioritize postpartum nutrition. It's not just about your own recovery, but you can even enhance the quality and the nutrient content of the milk that your baby's consuming, which is optimal for their development and their brain health and all of these other things.

So there's a number of micronutrients that are affected by maternal intake. A small handful of them would be DHA. So omega three fat, we see substantial variation in DHA content of human milk based on maternal intake.

A lot of that has to do with your seafood intake, um, and or supplementation with a preformed source of DHA. So meaning fish oil, cod liver oil, krill oil, something like that, or for vegetarians and algae based DHA supplement. Flaxseed oil doesn't move the needle because it's not, it's not a DHA form of omega three and our body can't convert enough.

So you can supplement all the flax oil and chia seeds and walnuts you want. It does not increase milk DHA, which is fascinating. Vitamin D is another one.

If moms get enough vitamin D, their milk also has enough vitamin D making an infant vitamin D supplement unnecessary because they're getting enough from the milk. The majority of women are not getting an enough vitamin D, which is why we have separate recommendations in the U S for an infant, infant vitamin D supplement, but that can be eliminated essentially by making sure mom gets enough, which is really cool. Um, B12 is another example.

So we have like tons of case studies on infants of vegan and vegetarian mothers or otherwise B12 deficient mothers. Cause you can be B12 deficient for different reasons. Um, where if the mom is deficient in B12, eventually the milk becomes deficient and then baby becomes deficient and that can cause actually irreversible neurological damage to the baby in about 50% of cases, which is wild.

So if you have any question about your, you know, B12 intake or status is certainly if you're vegetarian or vegan, stay on a B12 supplement postpartum. I just encourage everybody to be staying on a high quality prenatal throughout nursing, which would typically cover that. But if you're severely deficient, some people do need extra B12, but those are just, that's just three examples.

Like there are so many other nutrients where maternal intake does affect milk levels. And you know, it's logical when you think about it, like you're making milk from your own body. So if your body is lacking in essential nutrients, essential meaning you have to get them from an outside source, aka food or in some cases supplements, your body can't just create it out of nowhere.

Right? So hence if you're deficient, the milk becomes deficient as well. So again, like I'm looking at this from the standpoint of if we can help support moms with their optimal nourishment and recovery, we're also helping baby and getting the most, you know, optimal, optimally nutrient dense milk possible.

Ceridwen

Yeah, that's great. Thank you for that. Overview of how it can impact breastfeeding as well.

And I think also obviously, yeah. Thinking about the mom's then depletion, I know you mentioned DHA and if the baby might not be getting enough through the milk, but also for the mom, like her DHA. And one thing that always stands out to me is we talk about these things like mom brain or like brain fog after birth and how that can actually be a symptom of DHA depletion, right?

Lily

Yep. DHA depletion, B12, vitamin D, all of those choline, many of those nutrients strongly affect brain function. And you know, you're stretched thin postpartum because babies don't really like to sleep for long stretches of time, unless you have a unicorn baby.

I did not have a unicorn baby. So you're very sleep deprived on top of all of this, which adds to it. So if you're also feeling really nutritionally depleted and run down or just simply not eating enough calories to fuel you during the day, sometimes it is as simple as you're not eating enough period.

It doesn't matter which nutrient dense foods you're eating. You're not eating enough total volume and energy. Yeah.

You feel really rotten. So yes, absolutely.

Ceridwen

Does sleep deprivation, like give an extra kind of nutritional demand just the sleep deprivation alone?

Lily

I think it does because it's affecting your cortisol levels, your blood sugar and insulin levels. It's affecting your metabolism. I mean, your body is, I mean, think about how you feel with a night of interrupted sleep and how many for some of us, how many years do you go with interrupted sleep?

It's, you know, it's a lot. My kids are a little older now. So I finally do get full nights of sleep most of the time, but there was many, many, many, many years of interrupted sleep.

It does affect your cognitive function. There is some interesting research coming out on creatine helping with, um, with like recovery after poor sleep. That's really, um, I think worth looking at, especially for new moms.

That's interesting. Aside from supplementing creatine, your best food sources of creatine are animal foods, especially muscle meats. So, um, and dark, dark, uh, dark colored meats like, you know, dark meat chicken and Turkey and red meat and stuff like that.

Um, so, you know, if you're noticing a boost in energy from eating those foods, creatine could be part of the equation on that. Probably not the full thing. It is something also that could be supplemented.

Ceridwen

Yeah. That's I've never heard of that one before. That's actually a really good to know.

I'm going to look into that more. Um, so we've talked about the importance of nutrition to support postpartum recovery, to support mom's mental health, to support breastfeeding. So given all of these nutrients that we know are beneficial for all of those things, are there any specific foods that you recommend for postpartum moms that can help them to tick quite a few boxes?

Lily

Well, we've talked about protein a lot, right? So your, your protein rich foods definitely, I think need to take center stage, um, again, from a wide variety of choices and, uh, a heads up on just also, do not be obsessively taking the fat out of all of your protein-rich foods. Our our culture has been very obsessed with taking fat out of everything. So yolks out of the eggs, skin off the chicken, like boneless skinless chicken breast, cut off visible fat off of your steak, all that.

You actually do need more fat too. And that's going to be a really valuable source of not only calories, but like very long steady burning energy for you. Which you need postpartum if you're if you're in a state of feeling like you're hungry all the time and just going back to the sweets or just grabbing whatever is available.

I'm gonna bet you're not getting enough protein as well as fat. Okay, not to be anti-carb. You can have the carbs too, but make sure you're filling those those protein needs as well.

So of the protein-rich foods, I mean you're looking at variety like red meat, poultry, fish and seafood, certainly. That would be your food sources of DHA that are so important. Eggs with the yolks, whole fat dairy products, legumes, nuts and seeds, like the full gamut of protein sources available.

Just try to get a mix in your diet. Also, if you're open to it, organ meats can be really highly valuable nutritionally. If you're not open to organ meats, maybe you're open to bivalve shellfish like oysters, clams or mussels.

You can pick up like canned smoked oysters are a really easy way to fit them into the diet, but those are incredibly nutrient-dense, really high in iron, zinc, B12, DHA. So those are a fantastic option to to add in especially for those who don't like organ meats like liver or heart. I would build in some high quality produce.

In a lot of traditional approaches to postpartum, they're emphasizing cooked vegetables and fruits versus raw. I think part of that is because they're warm and your digestive organs have just completely reoriented after having a baby grow in there. Your uterus is the size of a watermelon.

All your digestive organs get pushed out of the way. Hence the heartburn and other annoying digestive symptoms you have. But that all needs to reorient.

So cooked, warm foods tend to be a lot more gentle on your digestion. So cooked vegetables like you might have them in a soup. Broths are very encouraged in many cuisines postpartum.

They're not only warming and easy to digest, but if you're using like a bone broth, it's high protein. It's high electrolytes. It's just easy and comforting on the digestion.

I would also build in some carbohydrate sources. Whatever is regional for you and simple and easy to prepare. You see a lot of porridges and rice in soups and other dishes.

Maybe root vegetables. Whatever is your choice. The carbs do give us a quick source of energy, which is helpful.

Many of them are high potassium when your electrolyte needs are so much higher while you're lactating. So, you know, we're just talking a variety of foods. You'll notice I'm kind of touching on almost all the food groups.

Really, there's room for all of them. Whenever possible, try to lean towards the more nutrient-dense options because the more that we crowd out the ultra processed foods, the packaged like white flour, white sugar, low quality oil kind of snacks and treats and desserts, the better, right? Especially when you're thinking about in very early postpartum when you're just recovering from birth.

You don't want to be eating a whole bunch of highly processed carbs because they don't move through your digestive system quick enough. The last thing you want is to be constipated in early postpartum. Okay, like you just had a baby.

Usually, it's kind of that first postpartum bowel movement is scary or uncomfortable. You don't want to like make it worse by eating just like gigantic bowls of pasta or something. Like that stuff just stops you up.

So you want to be having like high quality fiber-rich carbohydrates, plenty of hydration, plenty of proteins and healthy fats. That helps like keep everything moving as well as helps with your healing.

Ceridwen

That's great. I think there's, yeah, I love how you mentioned just a wide variety is great. And you mentioned some warming foods as well.

I know that we haven't really touched on kind of traditional postpartum too much, but that is, yeah, like you said, very common in traditional postpartum kind of practices. We're coming to the end of our main episode. We're going to go on and record our Q&A in a moment.

So anyone listening, keep an eye out for that Q&A where we will, I know you mentioned on organ meats, that's going to be one of the questions that was submitted for the Q&A. So if anyone was curious to learn more about that. Before we end, one question that I ask everyone that comes on the podcast is do you have any advice if you could go back to yourself when you were pregnant with your first baby?

Any advice at all that you would have wanted to tell yourself?

Lily

Yeah, back with my first. I would have told myself to do a little more preparation for postpartum. So, you know, I put so much energy into planning for a birth, you know, that I wanted.

And I still think it is very much a value to put energy into planning for the right, you know, setting and providers and people to be present at your birth so you can have the best possible outcome. I don't regret any of that, but I wish I had also put a little bit more emphasis on to postpartum prep. So, you know, lessons learned, right?

There's a reason the last chapter of Real Food for Pregnancy is all about postpartum and the fourth trimester and healing and nourishing yourself and nutrient quality of breast milk. Like that's all in there. And it's a very long, detailed chapter because I started writing that book at 10 months postpartum and I applied much of that to my second postpartum and I've written about this on my blog.

I have an article on postpartum, I think I call it Real Food Postpartum Recovery Meals. So check out that that resource. It's free on my site.

But what I did in my second pregnancy is I started prepping food for postpartum up about halfway through my pregnancy and stocked my freezer. I also had learned that, you know, it's okay to ask for help. So I invited my mom to come and stay with us.

She stayed with us for a month. She's like, are you sure? Are you sure?

I'm like, yes, please stay. Especially when you have a toddler. Help with the toddler so I can just lay here with the baby, right?

So I learned a lot through that first one and was able to have like a very nourished and much more relaxed postpartum as a result. So if I could go back to the first time I would have done more work on freezer meal prep. I would have expected a lot less of myself postpartum, like being less up on my feet, less using my, you know, thinking brain and asked for and yeah, really asked for more and welcomed more help.

You're not gonna get a badge for like doing it all alone. I'd tell you even if you're accepting all the help you're doing a ton like you're you really are and you know, it's a you've succeeded for the day if you have eaten some food and kept baby fed and clean. Honestly, like you just lower your like expectations of how many other things you're going to accomplish at the same time that you're in the newborn phase.

Again, a lot of lessons learned. I was a lot easier on myself the second time and a lot more prepared.

Ceridwen

Thank you for that. My last question for you for this episode is where can people find you if they want to learn more about you?

Lily

So you can find me on my website, lillynicholsrdn.com is the best place. You'll find all my books. You'll find my blog articles.

There's a search bar so you can search various topics. I have a bunch of freebies. So check those out.

I also have information on my professional mentorship. If you're a health care practitioner listening and are interested in the Institute for prenatal nutrition and then briefly social media, I'm on there as well. Maybe not as active as some people.

I have a love-hate relationship with social media, but my Instagram handles the same as my site. So it's lillynicholsrdn.

Ceridwen

I actually follow you on Instagram and I love all of your, you kind of share sometimes your meals that you eat and I find it really good inspiration for like often very quick and easy meals that are just like very nutrient-dense and delicious. Well, thank you so much for everyone listening. Make sure to tune in to the Q&A which will be released after this episode.

If you're watching on YouTube, please be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a video and leave a comment letting us know how you will be preparing for postpartum. If you're listening as a podcast, please be sure again to subscribe and if you want to support the podcast I would really appreciate if you could take a moment to leave a review. Before you go, please share this episode with another pregnant or postpartum mama who would benefit from this episode.

And thank you for listening and thank you again Lily for joining us today. We'll see you in the next episode.