A woman named Mallory Smothers posted a status update to her Facebook page on February 14 that taught everyone a thing or two about the benefits of breast milk. Her post included a photo of two bags of breast milk that she had pumped for her baby.
The two bags of milk were pumped only one day apart, but they look incredibly different. One bag contains milk that is white and the other bag contains milk that is yellowish. Smothers said that the yellowish milk was pumped after she had spent a long night nursing her baby, who was coming down with a cold.
Smothers said that a study from Clinical and Translational Immunology conducted in 2013 explains why the two milk samples may be so different. She said that she read an article from a medical journal that discussed how a mom’s milk changes based on her baby’s needs. Apparently, when a baby is nursing, it creates a vacuum with its mouth, which then allows its saliva to enter the mother’s breast.
Once it enters the nipple, Smothers says mammary gland receptors read the spit to see if there are any viruses or bacteria present within it. If they find something, the mother’s body begins to alter the immunological composition of the milk it produces for the baby. As a result, a mother who has a sick baby will produce milk that contains more leukocytes.
Smothers says that the milk she pumped after her baby began getting sick more closely resembles colostrum, which is a substance that is loaded with antibodies and leukocytes.
Smothers’ post has gone viral, and medical professionals have even begun stating their thoughts about her theory. Jamil Abdur-Rahman, who is the Chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology at The Vista East Medical Center, said that this is an extremely probable cause of a mother’s milk changing color so quickly.
Additionally, in an interview with HuffPost UK, a midwife policy advisor named Janet Fyle said that the human body can do incredible things, and Smothers’ theory about her breast milk is certainly true.
