Breastfeeding has been a rather touchy subject of late and has found it’s way into the news for a number of reasons. For the most part, it has been a debate over public breastfeeding, but a mother by the name of Mallory Smothers may be taking the talk in a different direction.
You see, Mallory is a breastfeeding mother who has been using her breast pump on a fairly regular basis. As she pumped from day to day, she noticed that the milk looked pretty much the same, and that was to be expected. About Valentines day, however, something changed.
It was around that time the baby was fighting a bit of a cold. When Mallory pumped milk for her that day, she noticed that both the color and consistency were quite different. To some people, it may look like something is wrong but when you know the reason, you will be amazed.
So yall.. This is just cuckoo awesome– I read an article from a medical journal not too long ago about how Mom's milk…
Posted by Mallory Smothers on Sunday, February 14, 2016
Smothers Writes:
So yall.. This is just cuckoo awesome– I read an article from a medical journal not too long ago about how Mom’s milk changes to tailor baby’s needs in more ways than just caloric intake.. So this doctor discusses that when a baby nurses, it creates a vacuum in which the infant’s saliva sneaks into the mother’s nipple. There, it is believed that mammary gland receptors interpret the “baby spit backwash” for bacteria and viruses and, if they detect something amiss (i.e., the baby is sick or fighting off an infection), Mom’s body will actually change the milk’s immunological composition, tailoring it to the baby’s particular pathogens by producing customized antibodies. (Science backs this up. A 2013 Clinical and Translational Immunology study found that when a baby is ill, the numbers of leukocytes in its mother’s breast milk spike.) So I filed that away in the back of my mind until I was packing frozen milk into the big deep freeze today.
I pumped the milk on the left Thursday night before we laid down for bed. I nurse Baby every 2 hours or so overnight and don’t pump until we get up for the day. I noticed in the wee hours of Friday morning, 3 AM or so– she was congested, irritable, and sneezing ALOT. Probably a cold, right?
When we got up Friday morning, I pumped, just as we always do. What I pumped is on the right side of the photo.
I didn’t notice a difference until today, but look at how much more the milk I produced Friday resembles colostrum (The super milk full of antibodies and leukocytes you make during the first few days after birth) and this comes after nursing the baby with a cold all night long..
Pretty awesome huh?! The human body never ceases to amaze me.
Now it’s true that nipples are amazingly sensitive, but they may also be sensitive for multiple reasons. The spit that touches the baby can actually be identified by the breast! So if you are a mom and are being hassled over breastfeeding in public, let them know you are just giving the baby a checkup.
This amazing post has been shared well over 70,000 times and is just another indication that we are wonderfully made.
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