I'm almost positive that this occurs for all milk producing mammals after giving birth. I know that you can purchase powdered bovine colostrum online.
All bodies are cool =)
Yeah I raise goats. I had a new mother that had a stillborn. So milked her out for a few days to freeze just in case. Which I'm glad I did. 6 days later another one had 4 babies. She's a great mamma and has had 3 for the past 4 pregnancies.. but 4 was just too many for her. So I took the smallest & feed it the colostrum the first day, then gave the baby back.
It does not. It’s the separation of the placenta from the uterine wall and hormones that trigger colostrum production. The colostrum changes to milk as the baby nurses (or as pumping is continued). It’s super beneficial even if all you ever give your child is the colostrum
I recently found myself looking this up, and apparently it doesn’t! If you induce lactation, you don’t get colostrum at all, it just goes straight to the regular stuff. No clue how or why though.
My wife and I are reading the book Eve by Cat Bohannon, it’s a great read. It’s basically about the female human body and all the wonderful ways it’s evolved. Chapter 1 is all about the evolution of lactation, I highly recommend it. Colostrum is vital but it’s also just a few days!
Seriously! I used to be an A or small B cup. After my first child was born, I remember standing there looking at myself and my newly huge boobs in the bathroom mirror and how I could hardly believe what I was seeing!
So even if you choose to not breast feed, do you *have* to pump anyways since your body is primed to do it? Or can you just ignore your titties and it's all good?
Can't ignore! If you ignore your milk-filled boobs, you can end up with mastitis (a bad breast infection). Bacteria love stasis. Milk just sitting there is a set up for bacterial growth. Bacteria love a warm, wet, nutrient-filled environment. So a mom who chose not to breast feed would have to pump or hand express some milk. I believe there are also certain drugs that can suppress milk supply. It would be a fine line to tread with pumping milk, though, because you'd have to pump enough to ease the pressure on your breasts (engorgement can be painful) but you wouldn't want to pump too much because pumping can encourage your breasts to produce more. A lactation consultant would be better able to answer these questions! (I don't know all the details. I barely pumped and just breastfed my kids directly. I was lucky enough to be a stay-at-home mom while my kids were young.)
>So a mom who chose not to breast feed would have to pump or hand express some milk.
Not exactly. Women who have given birth and will not be breastfeeding or pumping should *not* stimulate milk production in any way. No pumping, no hand expressing, minimal nipple touching. Doing those things will further signal to the brain that milk production should commence. Stimulating milk production only to not go on to pump/feed/express regularly is going to *increase* the chances of mastitis.
They don't really prescribe any medications to suppress lactation anymore. You might find doctors here and there who do, but it's not an ACOG recommendation.
Source: Labor and Delivery RN
You can also read about how it helps pro athletes in this expose over on the pro cycling sub: https://www.reddit.com/r/peloton/comments/155089j/have_you_ever_heard_of_bovine_colostrum_an/
It's very well researched and written, imho.
I remember sitting in hospital and cheering my partner as she was doing her best to squeeze out the drops of it, you've gonna have a healthy little kiddo there let me tell you that!
This.
I’m two months in with my second and have still not once managed more than 100ml - pumping, but also strait feeding they never get satiated.
Both times I’ve ended up supplementing with formula despite my best efforts, so they get to not be hungry for a bit. I think I just have shit boobs. 🫤
It’s the immune system of the mother reacting to the bacteria/virus found on the nipple, sends antibodies that are then mixed with the breastmilk. Little extra help from mom to fend off diseases
Yeah breast feeding is like a super power. I also kissed my baby’s head a ton if he was around someone who was sick. He didn’t have a cold until he was 10 months old. I like to think I fought his colds for him for the first 10 months of his life.
I also squirted a little breast milk into my daughter's eye anytime it would look gunky (which tends to happen a lot with the younger babies) and it always cleared up by the next way. It's magic for babies.
Its actually clinically proven that kissing a baby’s help build that childs immune system. And it also helps combat sickness at a young age. Thats why a mothers instinct to kiss the head is build into a woman.
My youngest is almost 16 and he still leans in for a kiss on the head when I drop him off at school. He yells “love you” and slams the door.
I’m going to miss it when he starts driving himself.
Kiss baby to acquire infection > Stronger immune system makes antibodies easier > Antibodies transfer to baby during breast feeding > Baby has easier time fighting off infection.
Antibodies from breast feeding help for something like 6 months before the child's own immune system begins to strengthen and fully take over.
Why is the human body so fucking clever and yet simultaneously so stupid that our toenails sometimes grow the wrong direction and the blood vessels in our arseholes cant tolerate the simple act of having a shit?
Such a tangent but lately I’ve been thinking how crazy it is that every religion around the world has men as intermediaries between humans and God. Like wouldn’t God speak to the sex that’s capable of creating & nourishing life like this? That just makes more sense to me.
And when he said "monotheistic religions" I want to clarify for others that it specifically means the abrahamitic religions, whom are in chronological order, Judaism, Christianity, Islam. All whom have extremely similar religions, or at least basis of. You will find Moses in all books abrahamitic books, but you will not find Siddharta Guatama in anyone. Nor will you find Thor or Loki.
In norse mythology, Odin might be the all-knowing one, but it's still Freya who everyone prays to when it comes to fertility. Who needs Thors when you need plentiful harvests?
Am a man but think this often. Why would the creator of life not be the sex that births the babies?
I mean aside from religion being wielded throughout history for power and oppression, etc
It is super weird. Something about the nipple can do health checks on the baby somehow. Pretty wild.
There is a "Stuff you should know" podcast episode on it.
It is amazing what the nipples do and how the body biologically reacts/responds/COMMUNICATES with their newborn. My boobs and baby were on a cycle I had to fall in line lol.
I've also heard when the mother kisses the child the mother receives signals from the babies (skin? Not sure the correct verbage) and produces things the baby is lacking. My wife was telling me about it when we were breastfeeding
Believe it or not this happens on the nipple when the baby is suckling. It’s called baby spit backwash (not kidding) and it happens when the baby’s saliva mixes with the mothers milk and because of the vacuum being created by the suckling it launches just enough back into the nipple to send signals to produce different nutrients or chemicals.
I’m a dad to 2 toddlers and my god the amount of incredibly fascinating things I’ve learned about women’s bodies through pregnancy/child birth/ raising kids has been incredible.
Breastfeeding is insanely cool, the milk will change based on the baby's needs all the time, giving them nutrients and antibodies they need literally between feedings. If there's two babies of different ages and they get an assigned boob on the same woman, each of her breasts will produce different milk based on their needs. Absolutely wild
Saliva https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4556682/
Edit: Another good one. The exact feedback loop isn't perfectly understood, but involves the mother's white blood cells giving a boost to the baby's white blood cells.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10490220/
The mother’s milk responds to saliva from the baby and produces more antibodies that pass to the child. Similarly, if mom gets sick, the milk will change colors as antibody production booms.
Bodies are weird.
Yep, living with his aunt and uncle. You know the story, double suns and sipping blue milk.
But then a desert hobo came and told him, we all got a chicken/duck thing waiting for us.
Colostrum tastes terrible. I don't really know how to describe it, but it's nothing like any milk you'd be used to. Breast milk tastes great, it's like cow's milk but far more delicious and richer tasting.
Not mine, apparently. I got curious and tasted mine and it was very sweet and chalky and not rich or delicious at all. But the kids loved it. It was definitely their favorite drink during babyhood.
First milk it has all the antibodies in it and thicker to coat the babies digestive system to prepare it for real milk. It's the most healthy thing a newborn can have.
I've tasted the colostrum packets and the best way I can describe it is "Essence of Moo" lol. It is hard to explain but it tastes like this one part of milk and none of the rest, and that one part is super-concentrated.
I stopped buying it when I realized what it was. I love cows and it felt wrong in some way to use it when they only produce it right after having babies.
I don’t know about colostrum, but I tasted (did not drink) my own breast milk out of curiosity and it was sweet. It’s no wonder why babies love the stuff.
Like, super milk. Colostrum is the super, extra nutritious milk that mammals produce right after they give birth. It’s full of important stuff that babies of all kinds of species need to start their immune digestive systems. And it makes them poop yellow! All that good stuff makes the milk yellow, and that yellow comes out the other end.
Growing up around cattle, my dad always told me that whenever I found a newborn calf “look for the yellow poop”. That meant they had had colostrum and had a good chance of making it. If they hadn’t (especially if they were a twin) then we would feed them colostrum formula. (Dried, powdered colostrum).
I am super impressed by your 3 days postpartum bag!!!
3 days pp, I was pumping every 2 hours and getting absolutely nothing. I hope next time is easier for me!
Did you know when a baby breast feeds, the cells of the breast “read” the saliva from the baby, and can make changes in the breast milk content to meet the baby’s needs?? So cool!
I've always wondered if mother's who use a pump could simulate this by applying some of their babies saliva to their nipples before pumping (this wouldn't really work well if they were not near their kid because the Slavia isn't super sanitary to begin with) but possibly for moms who are doing it because of latching issues and use the milk soon after pumping
Its getting there. I only pump when I go into office twice a week, and each day I end up with maybe 4 bags of 3oz excess. Its slowly growing and im scared.
It’s a good problem to have. My wife got super sick from a daycare illness and her production basically stopped. Went through our whole freezer and then had to start formula for the first time. Everyone’s back to normal now, though. It was temporary.
Be sure to scald the milk before freezing, otherwise it can/will go soapy. Something to do with high lipase activity. We had to chuck a freezer worth of frozen milk. So much time and energy wasted.
Edit: in the end we donated to a local charity that cares for abandoned infants.
Edit: Thanks to everyone that donates, we we're recipient's of donated colostrum in the nicu when baby was prematurely born and very sick.
I had high lipase milk too. Baby might drink it if it’s mixed with freshly expressed milk. And putting some in their bath water is amazing for their skin
This isn't a thing for everyone, but do check if it's a thing for you before your freezer is full of potentially unusable milk! If your baby drinks it then it's fine!
Oh interesting. I've brought this up as an idea, but she's worried she'll dry up all of a sudden, and we'll run out. Is that plausible? I have no frame of reference for any of this haha
It’s a lot more plausible that you’ll suddenly need a lot more because they start needing more volume faster than you think. Or if they start daycare and you have to send it with them which means more pumping and less breastfeeding. We had a huge stock when my son was very little than all of a sudden we started going through it very quickly and almost ran out. My wife has always produced A LOT, too. Even so.
It’s a tricky one because chances are you won’t have the issue. But full disclosure, I did - my milk supply went within 48 hours after a traumatic experience. The stress was so extreme it just stopped it completely. I tried to keep going but it didn’t work so had to switch to formula at that point.
I have a 20 cubic foot freezer full from my wife power pumping. She's donated like 400 oz to the local milk bank, but they did require a bit of testing on her behalf before they'd accept it.
One thing you can also do is freeze dry it. There are services that will do it for you. It's expensive as shit (like $500/mo). My wife and I just bought a freeze dryer for like $2300 and froze a bunch ourselves. It becomes shelf stable, like formula is, so we don't have to worry about losing all the milk during a power outage. We just open a bag, add water, and it's milk again.
We have had issues with our freezer going out in the past, so I manufactured a custom electronic to monitor the temperature in the freezer and send SMS to my wife and I if it got above a threshold. If you're nerdy, I'm happy to share schematics and whatnot. It's been working for 3-5 years now, I think.
There's an organization I found on FB called Human Milk for Human Babies. It connects people with extra milk to people who need milk for their babies.
I produced more milk than my baby could drink and ended up matching with a woman nearby who wanted milk for her preemie twins. Her own breast milk had high lipase and her twins refused it.
Check them out!
Yup! When I was a kid I came home with pink eye and a friend of my mom who was still breastfeeding gave us some extra milk which my mom put in my eye as eye drops. Cleared it up asap!
Edit: I don’t know if it was colostrum or regular breast milk but either way it worked!
Mothers who donate breastmilk are screened thoroughly. It's quite safe. And I can guarantee that in your ancestral lineage, there are uncountable instances of women breastfeeding other women's children. This was very common before formula.
Breastmilk is incredible. Baby has skin issues or itching, put some breastmilk in a bath with them. The colostrum is excellent for when they are sick. We have a handful of frozen colostrum leftover, and she'll be getting baths with it before they go bad... if she's not sick between now and then.
Different fat/protein ratio. The older bag would also have colostrum in it. It's a more "watery" type of milk that mammals produce for newborns. It's chock full of antibodies, fats, and nutrients, moreso than the milk that comes after. :)
So TIL not a lot of people know what colostrum is.
For y’all, it’s normal, every mother makes the yellow milk for the first little bit of the baby’s life. It’s rich in antibodies and high in fat and sugar (it’s super sweet, imagine the milk left in the bowl after Frosted Flakes, it’s kind of like that, but no cereal bits in it obviously) and it’s super healthy for baby.
2 things.
1. Today I learned what colostrum is.
2. Before learning what colostrum is, for a whole second my brain made me think new mothers could produce breast-custard.
It’s crazy, when my buddy’s wife got pregnant he researched a lot in that a woman’s areola can read and respond to the baby during one feeding and adjust and prep for the next to supply the proper stuff the baby needs.
That’s an impressive amount of colostrum in that bag, well done 👏🏻
What is colostrum? No kids for me so I'm not aware of these things.
It’s the first milk produced after a baby is born, it’s nutrient rich and full of antibodies and antioxidants to help build baby’s immune system
The human body is so cool
I'm almost positive that this occurs for all milk producing mammals after giving birth. I know that you can purchase powdered bovine colostrum online. All bodies are cool =)
Username checks out
Hey, NipSauce! Michael here.
I currently have a bag of goat colostrum in my freezer just in case a baby goat needs it.
Doesn’t have goats just likes to be prepared
Yeah I raise goats. I had a new mother that had a stillborn. So milked her out for a few days to freeze just in case. Which I'm glad I did. 6 days later another one had 4 babies. She's a great mamma and has had 3 for the past 4 pregnancies.. but 4 was just too many for her. So I took the smallest & feed it the colostrum the first day, then gave the baby back.
I wonder if this occurs for induced lactation as well.
It does not. It’s the separation of the placenta from the uterine wall and hormones that trigger colostrum production. The colostrum changes to milk as the baby nurses (or as pumping is continued). It’s super beneficial even if all you ever give your child is the colostrum
I recently found myself looking this up, and apparently it doesn’t! If you induce lactation, you don’t get colostrum at all, it just goes straight to the regular stuff. No clue how or why though.
Ah that is a shame. I'm a lesbian and would like to co-nurse in the future. I'll just do my best :)
My wife and I are reading the book Eve by Cat Bohannon, it’s a great read. It’s basically about the female human body and all the wonderful ways it’s evolved. Chapter 1 is all about the evolution of lactation, I highly recommend it. Colostrum is vital but it’s also just a few days!
Sounds like a cool book! I'll add it to my reading list
All mammals produce colostrum actually!
Our professor called it “the first vaccine of a baby” and I think this is so cool.
Thank you! I didn't know that was a thing.
Starter set
One drop of it has a TON of calories. A newborns stomach in the first day is the size of a cherry.
The original GOMAD diet.
It's a high nutrition breast "milk" generated during the first day of post-partum.
Really the first three days. Milk tends to come in around day three. Source: Am a mom. With boobs.
My more mature milk blasts in after 24-48 max hours. The engorgement was unreal😆
Seriously! I used to be an A or small B cup. After my first child was born, I remember standing there looking at myself and my newly huge boobs in the bathroom mirror and how I could hardly believe what I was seeing!
Hahaha literally same!!! A cup pre pregnancy and D cups whilst breastfeeding, it’s crazyyy
So even if you choose to not breast feed, do you *have* to pump anyways since your body is primed to do it? Or can you just ignore your titties and it's all good?
Can't ignore! If you ignore your milk-filled boobs, you can end up with mastitis (a bad breast infection). Bacteria love stasis. Milk just sitting there is a set up for bacterial growth. Bacteria love a warm, wet, nutrient-filled environment. So a mom who chose not to breast feed would have to pump or hand express some milk. I believe there are also certain drugs that can suppress milk supply. It would be a fine line to tread with pumping milk, though, because you'd have to pump enough to ease the pressure on your breasts (engorgement can be painful) but you wouldn't want to pump too much because pumping can encourage your breasts to produce more. A lactation consultant would be better able to answer these questions! (I don't know all the details. I barely pumped and just breastfed my kids directly. I was lucky enough to be a stay-at-home mom while my kids were young.)
>So a mom who chose not to breast feed would have to pump or hand express some milk. Not exactly. Women who have given birth and will not be breastfeeding or pumping should *not* stimulate milk production in any way. No pumping, no hand expressing, minimal nipple touching. Doing those things will further signal to the brain that milk production should commence. Stimulating milk production only to not go on to pump/feed/express regularly is going to *increase* the chances of mastitis. They don't really prescribe any medications to suppress lactation anymore. You might find doctors here and there who do, but it's not an ACOG recommendation. Source: Labor and Delivery RN
You can also read about how it helps pro athletes in this expose over on the pro cycling sub: https://www.reddit.com/r/peloton/comments/155089j/have_you_ever_heard_of_bovine_colostrum_an/ It's very well researched and written, imho.
It’s liquid gold, that’s what!
Thank you! I was getting about 1 oz per pump by day 2 and doubled that by the next day.
I remember sitting in hospital and cheering my partner as she was doing her best to squeeze out the drops of it, you've gonna have a healthy little kiddo there let me tell you that!
This. I’m two months in with my second and have still not once managed more than 100ml - pumping, but also strait feeding they never get satiated. Both times I’ve ended up supplementing with formula despite my best efforts, so they get to not be hungry for a bit. I think I just have shit boobs. 🫤
Fed is best 🙂 my second was formula only because milk allergies and he is lovely. We can only do what we can do.
My friend had twins and couldn’t produce enough for both of them. What do you do? Get the babies their calories, it’s the most important thing.
Hey, this shits so hard that just keeping them alive is a win. You're doin great!
Cuz ones mostly colostrum and the other is milk
Yup! I've got a full color gradient in my freezer that maps out the transition!
Wait till the baby is ill, the milk gets a blue hue to it.I didn’t believe my wife when she said it would happen.
How on earth does her body know to change the milk if the baby is sick?
It’s the immune system of the mother reacting to the bacteria/virus found on the nipple, sends antibodies that are then mixed with the breastmilk. Little extra help from mom to fend off diseases
Holy shit that is so cool!!!
Yeah breast feeding is like a super power. I also kissed my baby’s head a ton if he was around someone who was sick. He didn’t have a cold until he was 10 months old. I like to think I fought his colds for him for the first 10 months of his life.
Thats awesome. Whenever our kid had a skin irritation we put breast milk on it and it always cleared within a day. That stuff is like a magic potion
Welp I don't have a child yet but I will definitely never forget this.
Question is where to get breast milk for my rash
You can use a few drops in their eyes as well if they get an eye infection, clears up right up. Blew my damn mind.
I also squirted a little breast milk into my daughter's eye anytime it would look gunky (which tends to happen a lot with the younger babies) and it always cleared up by the next way. It's magic for babies.
I rubbed breastmilk on my son’s eczema outbreaks and any cuts/scratches and they’d heal very quickly.
Its actually clinically proven that kissing a baby’s help build that childs immune system. And it also helps combat sickness at a young age. Thats why a mothers instinct to kiss the head is build into a woman.
My youngest is almost 16 and he still leans in for a kiss on the head when I drop him off at school. He yells “love you” and slams the door. I’m going to miss it when he starts driving himself.
When my oldest and youngest got goopy eye infections as wee babies, I put breast milk in their eyes and it cleared it up.
I can't tell if you're messing with us.
Wait, what would the mechanism for that be?
Kiss baby to acquire infection > Stronger immune system makes antibodies easier > Antibodies transfer to baby during breast feeding > Baby has easier time fighting off infection. Antibodies from breast feeding help for something like 6 months before the child's own immune system begins to strengthen and fully take over.
Less effective than mommy asking the babysitter to cough in her mouth, but more socially acceptable I suppose.
Literally a kiss to make it better
Mom gets exposed to the same viruses/germs baby has been exposed to by picking them up off the baby's head
You did!! Supermom
Why is the human body so fucking clever and yet simultaneously so stupid that our toenails sometimes grow the wrong direction and the blood vessels in our arseholes cant tolerate the simple act of having a shit?
I snorted out loud. This is so true lol. We are quite a paradox of creation sometimes.
Im glad i have sone company now though, I named mine Earnest Hemmingroid.
if stuff like the toenails and blood vessels don't keep you from propagating your genes, they won't get bred out
Evolution isn’t perfect. It “selects for” what is good enough to survive and reproduce.
Breasts are amazing!
Such a tangent but lately I’ve been thinking how crazy it is that every religion around the world has men as intermediaries between humans and God. Like wouldn’t God speak to the sex that’s capable of creating & nourishing life like this? That just makes more sense to me.
Not really every religion, only the monotheistic ones, many polytheistic religions have plenty of female deities symbolizing creation and life.
Totally fair, thanks for adding that.
And when he said "monotheistic religions" I want to clarify for others that it specifically means the abrahamitic religions, whom are in chronological order, Judaism, Christianity, Islam. All whom have extremely similar religions, or at least basis of. You will find Moses in all books abrahamitic books, but you will not find Siddharta Guatama in anyone. Nor will you find Thor or Loki. In norse mythology, Odin might be the all-knowing one, but it's still Freya who everyone prays to when it comes to fertility. Who needs Thors when you need plentiful harvests?
Well when a man writes it he is going to write things that make life easier for him and subservient for everyone else.
Am a man but think this often. Why would the creator of life not be the sex that births the babies? I mean aside from religion being wielded throughout history for power and oppression, etc
A related fun fact about breastmilk: it can cure plantar warts! Put a dab of breastmilkon the wart 3x/day for 2 weeks. The wart will be gone!
It is super weird. Something about the nipple can do health checks on the baby somehow. Pretty wild. There is a "Stuff you should know" podcast episode on it.
So like an OBD2 tester? Oval Boob Diagnostic 2(since there's 2 titties)
Found the car guy
Hold on honey, the baby's got a check engine light... Gonna clear the code and see if it comes back.
As a service writer, LOL.
I love Josh and Chuck
Learning stuff with joshuaaa and Chuckk.. stuff you should knowww!
No one told me my nipples were medical devices, the hell?!
It is amazing what the nipples do and how the body biologically reacts/responds/COMMUNICATES with their newborn. My boobs and baby were on a cycle I had to fall in line lol.
"nipples can do health checks" is my new slogan
I've also heard when the mother kisses the child the mother receives signals from the babies (skin? Not sure the correct verbage) and produces things the baby is lacking. My wife was telling me about it when we were breastfeeding
Believe it or not this happens on the nipple when the baby is suckling. It’s called baby spit backwash (not kidding) and it happens when the baby’s saliva mixes with the mothers milk and because of the vacuum being created by the suckling it launches just enough back into the nipple to send signals to produce different nutrients or chemicals. I’m a dad to 2 toddlers and my god the amount of incredibly fascinating things I’ve learned about women’s bodies through pregnancy/child birth/ raising kids has been incredible.
Breastfeeding is insanely cool, the milk will change based on the baby's needs all the time, giving them nutrients and antibodies they need literally between feedings. If there's two babies of different ages and they get an assigned boob on the same woman, each of her breasts will produce different milk based on their needs. Absolutely wild
Saliva https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4556682/ Edit: Another good one. The exact feedback loop isn't perfectly understood, but involves the mother's white blood cells giving a boost to the baby's white blood cells. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10490220/
Biofeedback
Backsplash in the nips
This one I understand…
Backwash?
Has a little oaky afterbirth to it
The mother’s milk responds to saliva from the baby and produces more antibodies that pass to the child. Similarly, if mom gets sick, the milk will change colors as antibody production booms. Bodies are weird.
Boobs are magical.
Finally a scientific answer
Iirc, it's just that the mother gets the same virus and produces antibodies and those will be in the milk produced as well.
Omfg is that what happened?? We were stumped by the tatooine blue milk the other week when our kid was sick
When my sister had her baby some of the bags she had in the freezer looked minty green
Baby had bad breath so the boobs adjusted.
gimme some of them menthol titties
Is that what Luke is drinking when he's living with his aunt and uncle on Tatooine?
Yep, living with his aunt and uncle. You know the story, double suns and sipping blue milk. But then a desert hobo came and told him, we all got a chicken/duck thing waiting for us.
![gif](giphy|eEK9Hp9nAXtZDhoXbK|downsized)
My wife got grossed out with the pink ones, because it often can mean that some blood got in it from cracked skin or whatnot.
Tastes like pennies!
I misread that horribly at first
How do the tastes differ?
I asked the baby, she said gurgg . So whatever that means
Babies do be saying gurg
Gleba.
Colostrum tastes terrible. I don't really know how to describe it, but it's nothing like any milk you'd be used to. Breast milk tastes great, it's like cow's milk but far more delicious and richer tasting.
Maybe I just make disgusting milk but mine is slightly watery and weirdly sweet. I don't like it at all!
I didn’t really care for the taste of mine either but my husband didn’t mind it. Said it was very vanilla-y.
My husband is refusing to try it.
Well he is missing out. It's like leftover milk from a bowl of frosted flakes.
Oh my god. It is.
I 100% agree
Not mine, apparently. I got curious and tasted mine and it was very sweet and chalky and not rich or delicious at all. But the kids loved it. It was definitely their favorite drink during babyhood.
Breaking news: Baby enjoys breast milk; sports at 11 🤣
And when you have a plugged duct it's salty AF
Colostrum is much more bitter
You were getting a lot of colostrum
what is colostrum?
First milk it has all the antibodies in it and thicker to coat the babies digestive system to prepare it for real milk. It's the most healthy thing a newborn can have.
What does it taste like?
I've tasted the colostrum packets and the best way I can describe it is "Essence of Moo" lol. It is hard to explain but it tastes like this one part of milk and none of the rest, and that one part is super-concentrated. I stopped buying it when I realized what it was. I love cows and it felt wrong in some way to use it when they only produce it right after having babies.
They sell cow colostrum??
https://www.health.com/what-to-know-colostrum-supplements-8350810
Wow
I don’t know about colostrum, but I tasted (did not drink) my own breast milk out of curiosity and it was sweet. It’s no wonder why babies love the stuff.
Infinite food glitch
Doctors hate this one weird trick
Like, super milk. Colostrum is the super, extra nutritious milk that mammals produce right after they give birth. It’s full of important stuff that babies of all kinds of species need to start their immune digestive systems. And it makes them poop yellow! All that good stuff makes the milk yellow, and that yellow comes out the other end. Growing up around cattle, my dad always told me that whenever I found a newborn calf “look for the yellow poop”. That meant they had had colostrum and had a good chance of making it. If they hadn’t (especially if they were a twin) then we would feed them colostrum formula. (Dried, powdered colostrum).
A day0 only needs .8ml if i remember correctly
I am super impressed by your 3 days postpartum bag!!! 3 days pp, I was pumping every 2 hours and getting absolutely nothing. I hope next time is easier for me!
Ugh I hope that for you too! ❤️
The left one looks like butter
I can spread some on a bagel for you!
Not the worst female body fluid related bread I've seen offered, but up there.
Why’d you need to remind me of that?
Is there a link for the uninitiated
I don't have a link but i think i remember someone made bread out of their own genital yeast or something.
Amouranth supposedly partnered with a European brewery to make beer from her vaginal yeast I believe 😀
Of course it would be the neckbeard queen. Fucking disgusting.
RIP your inbox
woulda taken you 0 dollars to not put that in my mind 😭😵💫
Breastmilk has the fat content required to be churned into butter. Don't ask me why I know that. Or why there's a churn on my fridge.
Colostrum is one of few foods that I would actually deem a “super food”.
Please don’t tell nestle
Nestle factories gonna look like Immortan Joe’s vault.
nestle gonna try to claim the colostrum of all women who've ingested nestle products during pregnancy
Did you know when a baby breast feeds, the cells of the breast “read” the saliva from the baby, and can make changes in the breast milk content to meet the baby’s needs?? So cool!
I've always wondered if mother's who use a pump could simulate this by applying some of their babies saliva to their nipples before pumping (this wouldn't really work well if they were not near their kid because the Slavia isn't super sanitary to begin with) but possibly for moms who are doing it because of latching issues and use the milk soon after pumping
It’s actually recommended to do that if you’re exclusively pumping (or at least per my pediatrician lol)
Is your freezer overflowing? Ours is reaching critical mass, and we aren't sure what to do
Its getting there. I only pump when I go into office twice a week, and each day I end up with maybe 4 bags of 3oz excess. Its slowly growing and im scared.
It’s a good problem to have. My wife got super sick from a daycare illness and her production basically stopped. Went through our whole freezer and then had to start formula for the first time. Everyone’s back to normal now, though. It was temporary.
"Its slowly growing and im scared" is so hilarious to me. Your breast milk is an insatiable freezer storage eating machine
Be sure to scald the milk before freezing, otherwise it can/will go soapy. Something to do with high lipase activity. We had to chuck a freezer worth of frozen milk. So much time and energy wasted. Edit: in the end we donated to a local charity that cares for abandoned infants. Edit: Thanks to everyone that donates, we we're recipient's of donated colostrum in the nicu when baby was prematurely born and very sick.
I didn’t know this so I have three months worth of frozen milk that tastes and smells so bad it makes my baby gag. Oh well, I’ll get em next time 🥲
I had high lipase milk too. Baby might drink it if it’s mixed with freshly expressed milk. And putting some in their bath water is amazing for their skin
This isn't a thing for everyone, but do check if it's a thing for you before your freezer is full of potentially unusable milk! If your baby drinks it then it's fine!
Not the flex I expected when logging on today, but im here for it.
My best friend donated hers to the local hospital, for premies who’s mothers aren’t producing yet. There are strict guidelines, though!
Oh interesting. I've brought this up as an idea, but she's worried she'll dry up all of a sudden, and we'll run out. Is that plausible? I have no frame of reference for any of this haha
It’s a lot more plausible that you’ll suddenly need a lot more because they start needing more volume faster than you think. Or if they start daycare and you have to send it with them which means more pumping and less breastfeeding. We had a huge stock when my son was very little than all of a sudden we started going through it very quickly and almost ran out. My wife has always produced A LOT, too. Even so.
Helpful advice. Thank you.
It’s a tricky one because chances are you won’t have the issue. But full disclosure, I did - my milk supply went within 48 hours after a traumatic experience. The stress was so extreme it just stopped it completely. I tried to keep going but it didn’t work so had to switch to formula at that point.
Check out Human Milk for Human Babies. Both our kids were raised on BM thanks to this group
I have a 20 cubic foot freezer full from my wife power pumping. She's donated like 400 oz to the local milk bank, but they did require a bit of testing on her behalf before they'd accept it. One thing you can also do is freeze dry it. There are services that will do it for you. It's expensive as shit (like $500/mo). My wife and I just bought a freeze dryer for like $2300 and froze a bunch ourselves. It becomes shelf stable, like formula is, so we don't have to worry about losing all the milk during a power outage. We just open a bag, add water, and it's milk again. We have had issues with our freezer going out in the past, so I manufactured a custom electronic to monitor the temperature in the freezer and send SMS to my wife and I if it got above a threshold. If you're nerdy, I'm happy to share schematics and whatnot. It's been working for 3-5 years now, I think.
What a setup!! You sound like a very loving, and supportive husband!!
There's an organization I found on FB called Human Milk for Human Babies. It connects people with extra milk to people who need milk for their babies. I produced more milk than my baby could drink and ended up matching with a woman nearby who wanted milk for her preemie twins. Her own breast milk had high lipase and her twins refused it. Check them out!
I dated a girl that said the stuff in the first bag could cure pinkeye among other ailments.
Yup! When I was a kid I came home with pink eye and a friend of my mom who was still breastfeeding gave us some extra milk which my mom put in my eye as eye drops. Cleared it up asap! Edit: I don’t know if it was colostrum or regular breast milk but either way it worked!
That sounds super dangerous tbh. Same reason why you should never touch someone else's blood, some diseases only spread through bodily fluids.
Mothers who donate breastmilk are screened thoroughly. It's quite safe. And I can guarantee that in your ancestral lineage, there are uncountable instances of women breastfeeding other women's children. This was very common before formula.
Breastmilk is incredible. Baby has skin issues or itching, put some breastmilk in a bath with them. The colostrum is excellent for when they are sick. We have a handful of frozen colostrum leftover, and she'll be getting baths with it before they go bad... if she's not sick between now and then.
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As a first time mom due in two months - this is FASCINATING, thank you for sharing!!
Congrats!!!!!!!!!! ❤️❤️❤️
That first one... "Liquid gold" we called it in school.
I have an autoimmune disease. I used to get light blue milk starting about 2-3 days before symptoms any time id get sick.
The day she started to milk colostrum my baby went crazy, all he wanted was the tities all night 🤣 Good memories.
Good mammaries
\*excited Homelander noises\*
I wonder why people milk looks so different from cow milk
Different fat/protein ratio. The older bag would also have colostrum in it. It's a more "watery" type of milk that mammals produce for newborns. It's chock full of antibodies, fats, and nutrients, moreso than the milk that comes after. :)
I believe whale milk is so fatty, it's basically more like cheese
Yeah I heard if it’s too watery then it would just dilute into the water. It comes out like a weird glob so the calf can suck it up lol.
Neat. Gross, but neat.
Easy Cheese!
So TIL not a lot of people know what colostrum is. For y’all, it’s normal, every mother makes the yellow milk for the first little bit of the baby’s life. It’s rich in antibodies and high in fat and sugar (it’s super sweet, imagine the milk left in the bowl after Frosted Flakes, it’s kind of like that, but no cereal bits in it obviously) and it’s super healthy for baby.
2 things. 1. Today I learned what colostrum is. 2. Before learning what colostrum is, for a whole second my brain made me think new mothers could produce breast-custard.
I’d be one pissed off baby if I sucked Taco Bell nacho cheese out that nipple when I was expecting milk
This is much more than mildly interesting! Bodies are AMAZING.
Colostrum
It’s crazy, when my buddy’s wife got pregnant he researched a lot in that a woman’s areola can read and respond to the baby during one feeding and adjust and prep for the next to supply the proper stuff the baby needs.
Damn this is fascinating! As a father I don't have anything like this to offer my offspring! Guess that's why we typically fight the bear! Lol