We tell mothers to breastfeed. We rarely ask if they have eaten.

There is an imbalance in how breastfeeding gets discussed. Enormous attention goes to the baby, the latch, the schedule, the six-month mark. Very little goes to the woman producing the milk, beyond an instruction to keep going.

The practical question most nursing mothers actually have is simple. How much more do I need to eat, and can I afford it?

The answer is more reassuring than most people expect. A breastfeeding mother needs roughly 330 to 400 extra kilocalories a day, according to Mayo Clinic guidance. In real terms that is one additional balanced plate, or two substantial snacks. It is not double portions. It is not a special diet. It is not the imported supplements that get marketed at new mothers.

What matters more than the quantity is what the plate contains. Milk production draws on protein, iron, calcium, iodine and B vitamins, and a mother who is not getting enough will produce adequate milk while depleting her own reserves to do it. That is the part worth stressing. The baby is largely protected. The mother is not.

The good news for a Nigerian household is that the foods that do this work best are local and comparatively cheap. Beans are among the most efficient protein sources available in this country. Moi moi delivers the same protein in a form most people will actually eat regularly. Eggs are dense in protein, choline and vitamin A. Groundnut and kuli-kuli add protein and healthy fat at low cost. Ugu, soko, ewedu and other dark leafy greens carry iron, folate and vitamin A. Small dried fish, eaten whole, is one of the best calcium sources most families already buy. Pap with milk, fruit in season, palm oil in small quantities for vitamin A.

None of that requires a supermarket.

On water, the advice has been overstated for years. A nursing mother should drink to her thirst, which will be greater than usual, and keeping a cup within reach of wherever she sits to feed is genuinely useful because thirst tends to arrive mid-feed. Forcing litres beyond thirst does not increase supply. It just means more trips to the toilet with a baby attached.

Two beliefs are worth addressing directly, because both cause harm in opposite directions.

The first is that a slim mother cannot produce enough milk. This is not correct. Body size does not determine milk supply. Even mothers who are mildly undernourished produce milk of adequate quantity and quality, because the body prioritises the infant. The mother pays the cost, not the baby. A slim woman being told she cannot feed her child is being handed an unnecessary anxiety, and that anxiety is frequently the thing that leads to early supplementation.

The second is the pressure to eat enormously, to “eat for two,” which combines with the equally common pressure to lose the pregnancy weight quickly. Both extremes are unhelpful. Gradual weight change while eating adequately is normal and safe. Sharp restriction during lactation is not, and neither is the assumption that a nursing mother should be eating without limit.

There is a household instruction embedded in all of this, and it is not aimed at the mother. If someone in your home is breastfeeding, cook one extra portion. Put it somewhere she can reach with one hand. Leave water next to where she sits. That is a smaller intervention than most nutrition programmes will ever design, and in the first weeks it is worth more than most of them.