Mallory Smothers is a huge proponent of breastmilk. Breastmilk is known to be high in protein and nutrients, which are vital for a newborn baby’s growth and development. Moreover, breastmilk changes composition over time as a baby grows and its needs change.
While breastfeeding her baby, Mallory made a startling discovery.
One night, Mallory pumped before laying down for bed. The next morning, she noticed that her baby daughter was sick. She felt congested and sneezed uncontrollably. Mallory’s first thought was a cold, so she thought nothing of it.
She pumped again that morning, and that’s when she noticed something shocking. The new bag of breastmilk looked very different from the bag of breastmilk she had pumped the previous day.
Read on to find out what the meaning was. This is information that every parent needs to know!
“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 A LOT.
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.”
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[Source: Facebook – Mallory Smothers]
