Benefits of Breastfeeding - Even with LPLD!

The good news is that folks with LPLD are getting diagnosed earlier, even as babies!  The bad news is that they are still being told some crazy things by medical folks who had never seen this condition before.  The good news is that in all likelihood, if those kids have been practicing this diet for as long as they can remember, they seem to have an easier time sticking with it for life!  But that's just given my experience with a few adults who were diagnosed with LPLD as kids - if they never got in the habit of getting delivery pizza, they don't miss it!

I've been encouraging a few parents of LPLD babies to push to continue breastfeeding, so I thought I would lay out a few reasons it is even MORE worth it to breastfeed when your kid has LPLD!

-essential fatty acids and the best of fats - it's a tough balance with little kids, since their brain is developing and NEEDS fat, but LPLD kids can't have much!  You've got to make sure that what fat they DO get is LOADED with good stuff.  Some of this hinges on mom's own diet, but especially if she eats 1 to 2 portions of fish per week, her milk will be loaded with the awesome DHA that is so good for babies!  The same can NOT be said of fat free formulas, and not even necessarily with regular formulas - remember, a few years ago we didn't know that DHA was so good for babies, so formulas didn't have it at all.  But breastmilk has had it all along.  We don't know all the good stuff in breastmilk, but whenever we find something new, formula companies rush to add it to their products.  Why not skip the imitators and stick with breastmilk?

-decreased risk of diabetes - the more I meet people with LPLD, the more adults I meet that have LPLD and type II diabetes and hear about the difficulty of their diets - low fat AND low carb is way harder than low fat alone!  Plus both processes involve damage to the same organ, the pancreas, so I feel like they build on each other and make the other even worse.  If there's anything I can do to help prevent my kids from developing type II diabetes in the future, I'm going to do it!

-future benefits against cardiovascular disease - I'm still pretty convinced that folks with LPLD do NOT have an increased risk of heart attacks, unlike most cholesterol problems.  But just in case, breastmilk decreases what risk they have!

-decreases chance of other diseases (not particularly related to LPLD) like asthma, diarrhea, colds, SIDs, NEC (a BIG concern for premies!), certain kinds of cancer - a baby with LPLD has enough going on, might as well decrease the risk of these other medical headaches and even life threatening problems.

So how do you do it?  Check out my other blog posts on either separating pumped milk in syringes in the fridge, or even getting a milk separator - a $300 price tag will easily be saved in a few weeks of formula that you don't have to buy.  Or see if your health insurance will cover it, it's worth a try!  Each baby is a little different in how much skimmed vs whole milk they should have, so that's something to work on with your healthcare team.  For me, I breastfed my babies when I wasn't at work, in evenings, nights, and weekends, and skimmed all my pumped milk, and it worked out great.

Having had a baby diagnosed with LPLD at 6 months of age and started solid foods with her, there's no easier time to keep a diet fat free than with such a little baby!  Breastmilk has lots of bioavailable iron (it's easier for baby bodies to absorb the iron present in breastmilk than that in formula, even though technically they load formula up with iron to make it look like it has more and is therefore better), but I still like to make it a priority to get iron-rich foods into my kids as some of their first foods.  My favorite is ground beef; easy to get little chunks that babies love to feed themselves, plus I can buy super lean beef, cook it, strain off the fat, and even rinse it in a colander to get all the fat off that I can.  Bits of chicken are good, too!

Says who?
Here are some of my favorite articles that back up my above statements.  Of course, if there's something that you'd specifically like some data on, message me or comment and I'll dig something up for you!
The World Health Organization - LOVES breastfeeding
American Academy of Pediatrics - note that they even have a list of conditions for which mom or baby should NOT breastfeed.  And LPLD and FCS are NOT listed.  Why?  Is it because they are so rare?  Nope, they discuss galactosemia for heaven's sake, and that only happens in 1 in 30,000 babies (not as rare as LPLD, for sure, but not common!).  LPLD is simply not a contraindication for breastfeeding.
American Academy of Family Physicians - 6 months of breastmilk alone is the goal, at which point you start adding solids

If you're having troubles with breastfeeding, some of my favorite resources are Nancy Mohbacher, the Milk Meg, La Leche League, and Kellymom.