5 Things You Never Knew You Wanted to Know About Breast Milk
Oh the magic of a mother’s milk. It’s more impressive than you think. As a mama with experience, here’s what you need to know.
Human beings weren’t meant to make milk. That job was supposed to be left to cows, maybe goats. I guess even whale’s produce milk for their calves… hm. Weird. But not humans. It just doesn’t seem necessary. Babies don’t even really need breast milk because after all, formula exists in this day in age.
These were all of the things that I thought of in regards to breastfeeding, until I was large with child myself, and that’s when I became woke regarding the capabilities of my own body.
My daughter is about to turn the big 1 and we have been exclusively breastfeeding up to this point. Clearly I had a big mentality shift.
Never could I have ever imagined prior to my pregnancy that I would be a breastfeeding mama. Because again, I thought that was left up to the animals to do. Or just… weird people. Or women that like to show off their boobs in public.
Yikes. Clearly my ideas of breastfeeding were ignorant and skewed.
When I became pregnant with my daughter, she naturally became the center of my world. I wanted the best for the little gal taking up womb in my tummy. I spent countless hours studying books, reading on the internet, and listening to podcasts. It was an incredible and enlightening time during my pregnancy.
So without further ado, with my own breastfeeding experience as well as what I’ve learned during my pregnancy, here are some interesting facts that everybody should know about the benefits of breastfeeding.
1. Breast milk composition changes over time to adapt to the needs of a child.
The quantity of milk that a mother produces is dependent on the demands of her child. Many mothers know that in order for her to increase her milk supply, she needs to feed her child or pump milk more frequently. As a child grows, milk supply also grows for many mothers. It’s amazing to see a mother’s body adapt to that of her child’s. There are several other instances where this happens as well.
One example is that mothers to premature babies produce extra high fat, protein, and mineral dense milk in order to meet the needs of the continuing bone and brain growth of their little one.
Breastfeeding already helps the prevention of many early childhood illness, but in the case that either the baby or mother becomes sick, the mother’s body begins producing antibodies that help fight off the infection in their child.
“Early milk”, otherwise known as colostrum, is a thick, viscous liquid that a mother produces to provide an infant critical nutrition for their first few days of life. It helps the baby have their first few bowel movements, further helps the baby develop their digestive system, and is high in antibodies and white blood cells. It is actually several days after giving birth that a mother will begin producing normal/mature breast milk.
2. Breast milk may not be the white color you may be thinking of.
Depending on factors such as diet and medication, breast milk can be a variety of tints of colors, such as green (such as in my case), blue, yellow, orange, or pink!
3. Breast milk is considered a “living substance”
How so? According to Medela (one of the largest manufacturers of breast pumps), “Breast milk… contains live cells, including stem cells, which go on to become other body cell types like brain, heart, kidney, or bone tissue.”¹ It’s clear that breast milk plays an important role in the development of a growing baby.
4. Nursing helps women recover after childbirth.
Oxytocin is the hormone that is released both during nursing to stimulate milk to flow, as well as during child labor to help the uterus contract and ultimately push the baby out. Once a woman has given birth, many hospitals encourage women to begin breastfeeding immediately because oxytocin is released to help the infant feed, as well as to help the uterus contract to its original size. This is why breastfeeding is often painful the first several days.
5. Producing breast milk can burn up to 500–600 calories per day!
If a breastfeeding mother is feeding her child full-time, she will be burning the same amount of calories as someone going on a 5 to 6 mile run! Or a 45 minute lap-swim.
While women are pregnant, many around them joke that they need to be eating for 2, when in reality that is not the case until the baby is born and will rapidly be gaining weight those first several months. Pregnant women are actually only required to eat about 300 extra calories per day.
Believe me that breastfeeding is a lot easier said than done, however despite the challenges, there are many benefits to reap for both mother and child. Learning about the unique qualities of a mother’s milk makes it clear that humans perhaps were meant to nurse their young after all.
