Elena Cimelli - The Contented Calf Cookbook: Nourishing Recipes for Breastfeeding Mums: To Help Promote Milk Production

This unique recipe book is packed with 87 recipes using lactogenic ingredients that can help breastfeeding mums feed their babies. Designed so you can make and freeze the meals in the weeks leading up to the birth, this collection of nourishing and full-flavour recipes will appeal to partners, children, friends and non-breastfeeding mums too.

Elena Cimellis cookbook is a wonderful example of how we can embrace these special, healthful foods for breastfeeding mothers.

- Hilary Jacobson, Lactogenic Foods Expert & Author of Mother Food: A Breastfeeding Diet Guide with Lactogenic Foods and Herbs for a Mom and Babys Best Health

A fantastic must-have book for all breastfeeding mums. As a Nutritional Therapist specialising in pre- and post-natal nutrition, I find it informative and realistic. It provides delicious yet simple recipes that even the most kitchen-phobic mum can get her sleep-deprived head around!

- Stephanie Ridley, Nutritional Therapist - www.nourishtoflourish.com

Its rare that I receive a book to review and love it so much that I want to tell you absolutely everything about it. I can say, hand on heart that this book is a must for any new mum or mum to be who plans to breastfeed her baby.

- White Lily Green: http://whitelilygreen.blogspot.co.uk

I first began talking about lactogenic foods and herbs in an online forum for mothers with low milk supply in 2000.

At that time, the idea that what we eat and drink could help mothers build and maintain their milk supply seemed revolutionary. And yet, its not new at all. This knowledge is as old as humanity and is found in the collective experience of women around the world.

After reading my book, Mother Food , which explores these world traditions, Elena experimented with lactogenic foods while breastfeeding her own baby. She enjoyed creating meals and seeing the benefits for her milk supply and health. Inspired to share such delicious recipes with other breastfeeding mothers, Elena worked with her friend Jassy to develop this lactogenic foods cookbook.

Lactogenic foods enjoy a long tradition in Britain. The botanist, herbalist and physician Nicholas Culpeper mentions a dozen lactogenic herbs and foods in his books The English Physician and The Complete Herbal , published over 350 years ago.

In 1850, the London Obstetrician/Gynaecologist Dr Charles Henry Felix Routh published the first popular book on breastfeeding, Infant Feeding and Its Influence on Life . Rouths work was so all encompassing and accurate that 80 years later, breastfeeding books still copied large portions of its content.

Remarkably, Routh wrote a lengthy chapter on the causes of low milk supply and the foods and herbs that he personally had observed help mothers increase their supply. These foods and herbs are all here in this collection of wholesome meals and tasty desserts for the breastfeeding mother.

Today, as mothers garner the benefits of a lactogenic diet for their milk supply and health, we naturally feel inspired to become creative and to make these foods and herbs our own. Elena Cimellis cookbook is a wonderful example of how breastfeeding mothers can embrace these special, healthful foods. Enjoy the adventure of seeing how these tasty, wholesome additions to your diet can enhance your experience as a breastfeeding mother.

Author, Mother Food: A Breastfeeding Diet Guide with Lactogenic Foods and Herbs for a Mom and Babys Best Health

When it came to breastfeeding, I was incredibly lucky. Fifteen minutes after my daughter made her entrance into the world, she was latched on to my breast and there she stayed for much of the next 10 months.

But one of my friends didnt have such a good tale to tell. Her son spent his first week in a Special Care Baby Unit and this severely affected her milk supply. She faced an uphill struggle moving him from being bottle fed to being fully breastfed. Armed with a breast pump and the internet, she did whatever she could to build up her milk supply.

During one of her internet trawls she found out about foods and herbs that can help with milk supply. She told me about it and I was intrigued. I started searching for recipes that used these lactogenic foods, but there were only a few out there.

This got me thinking. In the run up to our daughters birth my husband and I had cooked up a storm and filled our freezer with meals that we could just bung in the oven once we were in the throes of new parenthood. I wondered if I couldve made those meals with lactogenic ingredients.

And thats how this book began life. I know from experience that most new parents dont have the time or energy to slave away in the kitchen. Getting ahead, stocking up your fridge and freezer, can really take the pressure off once your baby arrives. If you can eat foods that may help improve your chances of successfully breastfeeding, then even better.

The recipes in this book have been developed using lactogenic ingredients. Wherever possible, theyre designed so you can make them in the weeks leading up to the birth, freeze them and simply reheat when you need them. You can easily build up a stock of tasty meals, ready for when your baby arrives.

Weve also included some quick recipes you can prepare fresh, keeping these as simple as possible. All the recipes are nourishing and full of flavour and theyll appeal to partners, children, friends and non-breastfeeding mums, too.

So turn the page, get started and get stuck in!

Being a new parent is a whirlwind of experiences. You have a thousand and one questions about how best to care for your baby and high up on that ever-growing list is feeding.

Breastfeeding is a personal and emotive topic, with every woman having a unique experience of and feelings towards it. I feel incredibly lucky that I was able to successfully breastfeed my daughter exclusively for six months and continue on for another four months once we started to introduce solids. It wasnt all plain sailing, but Im very grateful I was able to experience the comfort and connection that can come from breastfeeding.

I cant explain why I had a good experience while it can be difficult for others. Breastfeeding is a complex process, with diet only a small part of the picture. But when I look back at what I was eating while I was breastfeeding, a lot of the food happened to be lactogenic foods that promote breast milk production. I think these foods helped me and perhaps they can help you, too.

This book is first and foremost a recipe book. But it helps to know, in general terms, how breast milk production works.

If you look at the diagram on the right, the inside of the breast looks a bit like a bush with the nipple as the base or stump. There are around nine milk lobes per breast, each with a main duct leading from the nipple and multiple smaller ducts forming the lobe itself. The alveoli are round, saclike glands that are lined with milk-producing cells called lactocytes. Its inside each alveolus that the milk is produced, travelling down the ducts and then out of the nipple.

The process of making milk (lactogenesis) involves two hormones prolactin and oxytocin and can be broken down into four simple stages:

The prolactin receptors on the walls of the lactocyte cells allow the prolactin in the bloodstream to move into the lactocytes and stimulate milk production.