Promoting nutrition in breastfeeding women.

Nurses have a vital role in providing nutritional education to breastfeeding women. In this article, the authors discuss the nutritional requirements for breast-feeding women in terms of micronutrients, macronutrients, and minerals. They provide recommendations for women with vegetarian diets and low-income women enrolled in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children program who may have dietary deficiencies, and they present a directed case study to provide an example of how to perform a dietary assessment and the educational support that may be offered by nurses to breastfeeding women.