Is your baby sick? The colour of your breast milk can tell you
Like many new mums, Mallory Smothers is a huge fan of breastmilk for her baby, and she keeps to a pretty strict pumping schedule.
But it wasn’t until last week that she discovered just how amazing mother’s milk really is.
Last Thursday night, Mallory from Arkansas was breastfeeding her daughter and noticed that she was a bit “congested, irritable and sneezing a lot.”
So she nursed the child on and off throughout the night, and the next morning, she pumped again.
The result? The milk that she’d pumped during that tough night was remarkably different to the milk she’d pumped the day before – when her child was well.
“When we got up Friday morning, I pumped, just as we always do. What I pumped is on the right side of the photo,” she said in her Facebook post, which has been shared over 55,000 times.
“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..”
Mallory went on to say that it's a clear indication that breastmilk changes to suit a child's needs – and she's got science to back up her theory.
In fact, she even included some of the more interesting facts in her Facebook post for other curious breastfeeding mums.
In her Facebook post, she wrote: “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’s 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 an infection), Mom’s body will actually change the milk’s immunological composition.”
In Mallory’s words, “pretty awesome huh?!”
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