How this mum demonstrated the 'awesome' power of breast milk
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Scientists are always telling us about the incredible ability of breast milk to adapt to the needs of babies. Now, thanks to one mum's pictures of her expressed milk, we can see for ourselves!
The photos are an amazing visual demonstration of just how much breast milk alters when nourishing a sick child.
Mum Mallory Smothers noticed her toddler was becoming poorly when she put her to bed last week.
Mallory, from Arkansas, US, expressed her milk as usual, then fed her little one through the night. Her little girl was 'congested, irritable and sneezing A LOT’.
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She then expressed in the morning – and noticed something fascinating.
The new bag of breast milk looked very different to what had been pumped the night before.
One bag of pumped milk was white, the other - which had been pumped on Friday morning, after a night of breastfeeding a sick child - had taken on a yellowish appearance. Mallory, who had been reading up on the science of breastfeeding, knew exactly why this had happened, and decided to post about her discovery on Facebook.
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Mallory's Facebook post in full:
So y'all. 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.
It is indeed pretty awesome. The post has had over 70,000 shares. Mallory commented:
"I am glad so many are wanting to spread the word on the amazing benefits of breastfeeding!"
Have you had discoveries similar to Mallory about the power of breastmilk? We'd love to hear all about them!
