About to sip coffee, pregnant or breastfeeding mom? Wait!!!
From the archive. This post was first published on the original Green Eggs and Moms blog and is kept here as it was.
What could be so important that I’ve stopped you from gulping down your coffee?
Independent.ie warns that drinking commercially prepared coffee may be dangerous for pregnant or breastfeeding moms because they don’t reflect caffeine information.
Professor Mike Lean, who heads human nutrition in Glasgow University, surveyed coffee shops in the Glasgow area. The results? He found that caffeine levels per cup ranged anywhere from 51 mg to 322 mg.
How does this affect pregnant or breastfeeding moms?
You can still have coffee as long as it doesn’t exceed the recommended daily limit of 300 mg. However, it may be challenging to monitor your intake since coffee shops don’t include nutritional labels with their products.
So, if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, you may want to keep this in mind before heading to Starbucks.
One last thing before you resume drinking coffee…
Another warning: A post I wrote back in April mentioned that the 300 mg daily limit is thought to be safe for healthy full-term babies, but not for pre-term babies.
Why? Because preemies metabolize caffeine slower which means they react more to smaller doses, compared to their full-term counterparts. (You can read that post here.)
Again, this is just something to be aware of, especially if you’re meticulously monitoring caffeine intake, and have a pre-term kiddo.
Care to share your thoughts?