Breast-fed babies have lower instances of colds and viruses. When they do get sick, they are often able to recover more quickly because the mother’s body produces antibodies specif

The More I Learn About Breast Milk, the More Amazed I Am

by Angela Garbes

To produce breast milk, mothers melt their own body fat. Are you with me? We literally dissolve parts of ourselves, starting with gluteal-femoral fat, aka our butts, and turn it into liquid to feed our babies.

But breast-feeding is more than being a good mom. And breast milk is much more than food: It’s potent medicine and, simultaneously, a powerful medium of communication between mothers and their babies. It’s astonishing. And it should be—the recipe for mother’s milk is one that female bodies have been developing for 300 million years.

Breast-feeding leads to better overall health outcomes for children, which is why the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend that babies be exclusively breast-fed for a minimum of six months. (…)

We’re also told that breast-feeding leads to babies with higher IQs and lower rates of childhood obesity than their formula-fed counterparts. I understand why people find this appealing, but I don’t plan to raise my daughter to understand intelligence in terms of a single test score, or to measure health and beauty by body mass index.

More compelling to me are the straightforward facts about breast milk: It contains all the vitamins and nutrients a baby needs in the first six months of life (breast-fed babies don’t even need to drink water, milk provides all the necessary hydration), and it has many germs and disease-fighting substances that help protect a baby from illness. Oh, also: The nutritional and immunological components of breast milk change every day, according to the specific, individual needs of a baby. (…)

Food points to who we are as animals—human beings with a fundamental need for nourishment, survival—but also to who we are as people: individuals with families, histories, stories, idiosyncrasies. Every day, calories, vitamins, and even clues about the culture I live in flow, drip, leak, and squirt out of my boobs, staining my clothes and making my skin sticky. And every day, I wonder what exactly goes into this miraculous substance.

(…)

Nutritionally, breast milk is a complete and perfect food, an ideal combination of proteins, fat, carbohydrates, and nutrients. Colostrum, the thick golden liquid that first comes out of a woman’s breasts after giving birth (or sometimes weeks before, as many freaked-out moms-to-be will tell you) is engineered to be low in fat but high in carbohydrates and protein, making it quickly and easily digestible to newborns in urgent need of its contents. (It also has a laxative effect that helps a baby pass its momentous first poop, a terrifying black tar-like substance called meconium.) (…)

Like a glass of red wine, breast milk has a straightforward color and appearance, but it possesses subtleties in flavor that reflect its terroir—the mother’s body. And it turns out that like any great dish of food, mother’s milk holds a variety of aromas, flavors, and textures.

The flavors of breast milk are as dynamic as a mother’s diet. In the 1970s, researchers at the University of Manitoba obtained samples of breast milk from lactating women and had them evaluated by a trained panel for taste, quality of sweetness, and texture. There were variations across all samples in all categories, most notably that the milk of a woman who had recently eaten spicy food was described by tasters as being “hot” and “peppery.”

Based on her more recent research, Julie Mennella of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia believes that these early breastmilk experiences help infants develop their own personal taste preferences, as well as increase their enjoyment of particular flavors.

Just as exciting as the possibility that breast milk may help my daughter develop a healthy appetite in the future, though, is the reality that it is helping her live a healthier life right now, and that without my knowing it, my milk has already been adapting itself to her needs.

Breast-fed babies have lower instances of colds and viruses. When they do get sick, they are often able to recover more quickly because the mother’s body produces antibodies specific to the baby’s infection. This is an idea that has literally kept me up for hours at night. How exactly is my body able to write my daughter a prescription for her illness without a diagnosis?

When a baby suckles at its mother’s breast, a vacuum is created. Within that vacuum, the infant’s saliva is sucked back into the mother’s nipple, where receptors in her mammary gland read its signals. This “baby spit backwash,” as she delightfully describes it, contains information about the baby’s immune status. If the mammary gland receptors detect the presence of pathogens, they compel the mother’s body to produce antibodies to fight it, and those antibodies travel through breast milk back into the baby’s body, where they target the infection.

At the same time that it is medicine, breast milk is a private conversation between mother and child. While my daughter lacks words, breast feeding makes it possible for her to tell me exactly what she needs. The messages we are sending each other are literally made of ourselves, and they tell us about what is going on in our lives at that very moment.

(Source:http://www.thestranger.com/features

feature/2015/08/26/22755273/the-more-i-learn-about-breast-milk-themore- amazed-i-am)

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