A mum just posted a ‘cuckoo awesome’ photo of her breastmilk on Facebook and the photo has been shared over 73,000 times.
The photo was from Mallory Smothers Facebook Page. It showed two bags of breast milk that had been pumped on Thursday night and Friday morning. One bag is full of white milk and the other has a strong tinge of yellow.
The mother wrote a long caption with the photo explaining that she’s read an article in a medical journal that has explained how mother’s milk can change to tailor a baby’s needs.
“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), mum’s body will actually change the milk’s immunological composition, tailoring it to the baby’s particular pathogens by producing customised antibodies,” Mallory Smothers wrote.
The Motherish reported this fascinating research last month. You can read more about that here.
As Smothers was packing away her frozen milk on February 15th she noticed a difference in the milk’s colour. She notes that she had pumped the left bag on Thursday night and then the right bag in the ‘wee hours of Friday morning’. She explains that her baby became sick on Thursday night.
“3 AM or so — she was congested, irritable, and sneezing ALOT. Probably a cold, right?” the breastfeeding mother wrote.
So the right bag was pumped after the congested, sneezing irritable moment, whereas the left bag was pumped before that.
