RECIPE |Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter No-Bake Lactation Balls

When you start reading blog posts and in your head read words as “brest thing to use…” or “here are the brenefits…” then yeah, you’ve got breast brain. Which means you’re probably trying to figure out more information about your milk supply, right? I can’t be the only one that started researching tricks to increasing my breastmilk supply and read every ‘b – word’ with an added ‘bre’ at the beginning?

Well, for my Postpartum Meal Prep Guide, I knew I needed to include some type of protein ball, but then after I had our son, I knew I would be doing any momma out there a disservice by not providing a lactation enhancing recipe that required no cooking. Something that you can easily make ahead of time in a batch and then quickly grab from the fridge throughout the week was CRITICAL to any postpartum meal prep guide in my humble opinion. After going all day without eating right after I gave birth, I wished a snack like these lactation balls would have been on my radar to prep before I gave birth.

Once I started breastfeeding, it all came pretty easy and I got a little cocky about it all (oops). I then realized that I had some lazy boobs on my hands. One day they want to produce and the next couple days they decide to go on vacation. Guess what though, my little guy’s appetite doesn’t exactly follow this same schedule! Go figure… he wants to eat more and more every week.

So with this “vacay boob” discovery, I decided I needed to do a little digging into how I can properly fuel myself to produce the most milk possible.

Of course, the answer that Doctor Google gave me was to adjust my diet. Go figure! And you may be shocked to know that yes, even a foodie needs dietary suggestions!

The key to any lactation enhancing baked or no-bake item is in two specific ingredients- Brewer’s Yeast and Ground Flaxseed.

Brewer’s yeast not only helps you increase your milk supply, but it’s also great for energy levels and mood boosting. Ironically, I’ve also been told to drink a beer to help increase supply, but it’s not quite as practical to drink a beer at 8AM (i’m more of a coffee gal myself) and the yeast in beer is different than the brewer’s yeast in that it’s ‘active yeast’ in beer vs. ‘non-active’ yeast that you’ll be adding to these lactation enhancing balls.

According to this article, you have the best odds of increasing your milk supply if you get 3 Tbls. of brewer’s yeast a day. But according to this article you need between 1 – 2 Tbls. of brewer’s yeast a day. Confusing, righht?

That being said, I have worked out the ingredients in this recipe to get you about a 1/2 Tbls. of brewer’s yeast per no-bake lactation ball. That way you can enjoy one or two, see how it works for you and then adjust your intake from there to help with your supply.

Usually I will eat 2 in the morning or 2 in the evening (they aren’t a bad after dinner sweet treat).

The other key ingredient to help increase your milk supply is flaxseed. Specifically ground flaxseed. It is packed with a lot of great nutrients and helps produce much needed fatty acids for moms. You can read more about the benefits (or brenefits …if you don’t get this joke then you need to scroll back to the top of this post!) in this article and this article.

If you see any lactation cookies at the store or online, look at the ingredient list and you’ll see that pretty much all of them include those two ingredients, as well as oats. The brands I used for the three key ingredients of these lactation balls can all be found on Amazon or usually at a store like Whole Foods or Sprouts! I will warn you that the Oat Mama brand is a bit more expensive than some other brands, but you really cannot taste it in these no-bake lactation balls.

Now, your next question may be, “Do these lactation balls actually increase milk supply? Do they REALLY work or do they just taste good?”

Well, to answer that question, (because I was wondering the same thing) I did a little experiment with this recipe. I ate 4 per day and took a picture after 24 hours around the time of my mid-morning pump session to see if I increased my amount.

Here are the results of my experiment:

Before eating any lactation balls, my daily mid-morning 15-minute pump yielded this much milk:

One day after eating 4 lactation balls, my daily mid-morning 15-minute pump yielded this much milk:

Convinced yet?

Now, I’m not saying this will be your silver bullet answer to your supply, but these balls are at the VERY LEAST a nutritious snack you can grab while you’re making a bottle or enjoy one handed… because you need a good supply of one-handed foods as a new momma! They say that if you’re breastfeeding, then you need about 500 extra calories per day, so a serving of these lactation balls would get you there and be packed with a ton of good nutrients!

And if you’re reading this post and you are not breastfeeding but you just though this balls looked tasty (you would be correct in that assumption), then you can certainly enjoy these too. Honestly, all these ingredients are natural and can be eaten by anyone, but you can sub out the brewer’s yeast for some protein powder to easily make these into your protein balls.

xoxo Ashley