Milk, in Theory and Practice

[browngirl]

This entry is short, impolitic, and plain, because I lack time and focus to make it eloquent, diplomatic, and pretty. But be that as it may.

gosling has been producing a prodigious quantity of milk, and because she's a generous and wonderful person, she's been sharing it. One of the babies fortunate enough to recieve this is the Joshlet.

And, among the many nifty features of this extremely nifty act, it strikes me that... one of the things I learned by having my life enmeshed with a new mother's is how an idea really shouldn't always be judged by its supporters, because I found a non-negligible minority of the supporters of breastfeeding to be pretty cruel. I suppose this is much more about the propensity of human beings to be cruel in the service of the ideas they want to promote than it is about anything else. [Insert witty analysis here, to be made another day]

Gosling, who is utterly wonderful anyway, isn't promoting breastfeeding by telling mothers who don't breastfeed that they're child abusers, by sending them literature linking formula with bone cancer or whatever, by refusing to talk to them, by figuring out who in their life is the stumnbling block (all tactics I've seen used). She's giving her extra breastmilk to her friends' babies.

And in doing so she's nourishing souls as well as bodies, and being the complete opposite of hurtful or harmful in any way.

So I just thought I'd write about how nifty I find her for doing this. (And ceo for helping her produce all this milk.)

Comments

[arib.livejournal.com]

I was under the impression that the immune-boosting properties of breastmilk only occurred the first few days or weeks after lactation started.

(Not knowing how long gosling's been lactating, it might still apply)

[quietann.livejournal.com]

It's been 18 months now. There probably aren't a lot of antibodies left, but the babies, it seems, are eager for her milk anyway :)

[gosling.livejournal.com]

Eager might be an understatement. Joshua went through over 26 ounces of pumped milk in the seven hours he was here. I think this kid is going to be seven feet tall. :-)

[gosling.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that the antibodies are still there, just possibly not at nearly the concentrations that earlier milk has. Or, depending on whose research one reads, perhaps it is more that as the child's immune system matures it is more resistant anyway, so that, while the milk still has the same concentration of antibodies, the difference is less noticeable because the child is less likely to get sick anyway. (Colostrum, from everything I've read, apparently is sort of a special case, and has not only immense amounts of antibodies but also may act to activate the immune system more rapidly than would otherwise happen in a newborn.) My guess is that the child would get antibodies for whatever both mothers had been exposed to in the immediate past, but that it probably would not make much long term difference, but I'm just extrapolating. I do know there is some relatively new research that indicates that children nursing directly will provide feedback through their saliva so that the mother makes specific antibodies for whatever the child has been exposed to as well as antibodies for whatever the mother has been exposed to, whereas in pumped milk there only antibodies for those things to which the mother has been exposed. There is a lot of very new research coming out on this anyway, so who knows.

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

feedback through their saliva
Wow. Bodies are amazing.

[gosling.livejournal.com]

They are. :-)

I love reading about new scientific discoveries about how the body works. It's just so fascinating. I'm amazed by what has been learned about the brain in the last decade, for example, and figuring out how most hormonal feedback systems work is probably really just beginning. There are probably ones we don't even know about yet. (And I could go on and on about this. One of the things I really look forward to over the course of my lifetime is reading about this stuff.)