This reminds me of part of “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”–that really creepy kid (he was…four, five?) and still breast-feeding and when his mother had another baby, he wouldn’t let her breast feed because he wanted his mother all to himself. His baby sister had to survive on bottles. Man, the scene when she finally does wean him…that was something.
That’s a lot creepier than idmb paints that movie to be, Freudian. 
I kind of undershot my point a bit when I referenced sippy cups and utensils. That’s bizarrely one thing missing from my early childhood memories. I don’t remember any proper meals. I did eat an entire box of oatmeal cookies and, on another occasion, half a bottle of aftershave. I think around 3 yrs kids start acting like the little proto-humans they are and I say that’s about the time to start cutting the apron strings. Speaking simply as a former child and current adult.
I just wanted to counter this slightly.
The immunity factors, known as immunoglobulins or antibodies, are large proteins. How important the antibodies in the milk are for the baby depends on the species and the type of placenta that species uses. For cows and sheep, who have very thick placentas, antibodies in the milk are essential for the newborn, because he comes out of the womb with no antibodies at all. For the baby sheep to survive the first weeks while his immune system gets going, he’ll need to get antibodies from mom in the milk. In humans, antibodies in the milk are less important because human placentas are very thin, and the baby picks up almost all the antibodies the mom has to offer direct from her bloodstream while he is still in the womb. So human babies are born with pretty much all the antibodies they might get in milk already in their bodies.
Even in species like cows and sheep who need antibodies in the milk, the ability to absorb those antibodies from the milk in the digestive tract drops off precipitously in the first hours and days of life. I mean, it would be really bad for the baby cow to just keep picking up any whole protein it happens to eat and sticking it directly into it’s blood stream. Bacteria like to make lots of nasty, damaging proteins. Instead, the calf digests the proteins down to harmless amino acids and absorbs those. So go any antibodies the baby gets in the milk after the first day or so of age. This phenomenon is known as gut closure. And, once digested to amino acids, the immunity powers of the antibodies are lost. It’s the same for human babies. They just aren’t going to absorb functional antibodies from milk after a couple days of age.
Furthermore, milk is not the same all through lactation. The first milk produced after birth is known as colostrum, and anyone who has lactated will attest to it’s increased thickness. That thickness is all the extra antibodies that your body is putting into the first meal your baby will have, right when his gut is most likely to be able to absorb the antibodies whole and functional. After the first couple of nursings, your body stops putting all those antibodies in the milk. Doing otherwise would be a waste since the baby can’t absorb them. That’s why the milk goes from thick to thinner.
So there are three reasons why an older baby isn’t picking up extra immunity from breast milk:
- He already got 99% of the antibodies he’s going to get from mom while he was in the womb, across the thin placenta
- He lost the ability to absorb functional antibodies from the milk by the second day he was alive
- The milk of late lactation just doesn’t have a whole lot of antibody left in it anyhow.
That said, milk is still really nutritious and digestible and healthy and if nursing your kid until he’s 6 makes you and him feel great, then awesome.
sorry for the soapbox, but I just heard this long stream of nonsense from a raw milk guy on the radio. Will try not to misdirect anger further.
</threadshitting>
Something I didn’t appreciate until watching lactation porn:
Humans have multiple openings on the nipple for the milk to come out. Cows and sheep have only the one opening per gland. Also, cows and sheep have that big hollow teat part, and a hollow area just above (the teat and gland cisterns, respectively) where a fairly large quantity of milk can be collected. Accounts for the high velocity.
There’s a big variety of number of outlets per gland by species. Horses have two openings, dogs and cats have like 4-6. Platypuses don’t really have mammary glands or teats, but instead sort of ooze milk from modified sweat glands onto the fur of their bellies for the babies to lick off. Neat!
**CarnalK **and lobstermobster, I’m guessing I will not change your visceral reactions to sustained breastfeeding. Just keep in mind that they are visceral reactions, not necessarily rational ones.
For instance, I honestly don’t see what possible connection there could be between a child being able to eat table food and requiring weaning. Certainly it is safer to wean when a child can get alternative sources of nutrition, but it doesn’t follow that this is a reason toddlers ought to wean. For me, as long as nursing provides benefits, even if it is “just” comforting or closeness, and there are no counterbalancing detriments,* then there is no rational argument why it should be stopped.
But I also want you guys to know that I really appreciate that you are both saying, “This is my personal reaction, but I have a live and let live attitude.”
*I don’t discount detriments such as the mother just being burnt out on the situation, I’m just saying that such considerations are very individual, and AFAIK no one has demonstrated that nursing older kids has any across-the-board drawbacks.
Pullet, I take it your field is immunology or some such? That is interesting information, and I confess I have pretty much just been going with the info LLL distributes, without checking for supporting research. I have heard that there is a dearth of research on breastfeeding beyond 12 months, mostly because it is next to impossible to get reasonable samples when less than ~10% of mothers breastfeed beyond one year, and many of those who do keep it secret.
As for cow milking versus human lactation, I can tell you from personal experience that they don’t call it the “Milk *ejection *reflex” for nothing! When my daughter would get my milk flowing, I could probably shoot milk for a foot or more. I have a friend who unlatched her baby and thought there was a pet hair clinging to her breast - nope, that was a stream of milk squirting out! But that amount of force is not common.
Regarding breast anatomy, it’s interesting that only recently have scientists corrected a longstanding misconception. For a long time, texts on human lactation included drawings showing “milk sinuses” just behind the nipple, where it was believed reservoirs of milk sat, waiting for expression. It turns out this “structure” was an artifact of the way they were obtaining images of the interior of the breasts of cadavers. More recently, using ultrasound imaging on living breasts, doctors found no milk sinuses, and several other differences. The whole story, with illustrations, is here: http://www.forparentsbyparents.com/mum_breastfeeding_research_anatomy.html
(link broken to the on the extra safe prudish side - it’s a medical cutaway illustration of a breast).
And that leads me to your questions, justanoldvet. While breasts can become “full” or “empty” after a fashion, the terms are misleading. The milk is being constantly produced and replaced, which is why, e.g., a nursing mother can drink significant amounts of alcohol, and once the alcohol clears out of her bloodstream, she can safely nursing without having to “pump and dump” her milk. For the same reasons, milk doesn’t go sour in the breast (one reason why bfing is more convenient than formula when you’re traveling or out and about), but if breasts become engorged without some expression to alleviate the pressure, you can get plugged ducts and mastitis. This is one reason gradual weaning is recommended - draining the breast less thoroughly and/or less often causes chemical signals which decrease production. So ideally you taper off, and have no engorgement, pain, or complications.
Thanks… and thanks for not laughing at my questions
Pullet, can we have some information on your credentials for such claims, or some documentation? I have to admit, I’m flabbergasted and blown away, because they contradict *everything *I’ve been told by my own pediatricians, nurses, lactation consultants and books. I’ve been open to the notion that breastfeeding ain’t all that, and in fact I’ve openly supported the idea that women with poor diets might be better off using formula, since with few nutrients in her body, it seems intuitive that there would be few nutrients in her milk. But no immunological reasons to breastfeed? That’s news, that’s *revolutionary *news, and since we’re fighting so much breastfeeding ignorance in this thread, I think it’s important for readers to understand that what you’re saying contradicts what seemingly every vocal expert out there says.
That’s not to say you’re wrong, mind. If you’ve been doing research in the field or are aware of some cutting edge stuff, I’m prepared to change my mind. As Unauthorized Cinnamon says, only recently did They change their ideas about the anatomy of the breast, so I’m open to the idea that old theories can be disproven. But this is so far out there as to be, in my mind, an “extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.”
Lactation porn? :eek:
I’ve looked pretty closely at Mrs. Justanoldvet’s breasts, and I have yet to see an opening. She says they don’t actually “open” till/unless nursing or lactation. Ya know… it’s funny… I’d be too embarrassed to ask her these things… guess hiding behind a monitor helps 
If you can imagine it, someone out there is masturbating to a website devoted to it. Yes, even that. That, too. C’mon, think of something grosser. Yep! There’s a website for that, ya big ol’ perv! 
They’re small even when you’re nursing, so you can’t really see them then, either. They’re not gaping maws, anyway. More like the tiny pores in your skin. If you took a water balloon and put a piece of tape on it, then stabbed through the tape four or five times with a pin in an area about the size of a dime, that would give you a fair approximation. You can see the water come out, but not really see into the holes it’s coming from.
:: runs up to Unauthorized Cinnamon and gives her a hug :: I’m nursing my 3-year-old, who seems determined to continue forever! It’s good to meet a sister.
This has been a great thread; just the kind of information exchange that Dopers should have on such a (inexplicably to me) charged topic. Well, for the most part. And I appreciate the people who have some misgivings participating with an open mind.
After nursing four babies, I’ve come to the conclusion that an individual’s temperment comes into play quite a bit. I’m a pretty even-keel sort of person. Not much rattles me and I am a quite open extrovert. I can handle pretty much what life throws at me (and, unfortunately, life has thrown quite a bit at me). So … I have experienced problems nursing and easy nursing among my children and have borne it all, armed with information, LLL support and the loving support of family.
I have yet to have the experience of “touched out” but probably, Cinnamon, if I were pregnant it would be a different story.
Sometimes I get weary of nursing and ready for it to be over, but in general I’m OK with it as long as he is.
I can answer one question :
And beware, this might enter TMI territory. I haven’t found any trouble transitioning at all. In fact, there has been more than one occasion where I’ve “transitioned” between nursing the baby and having sex with my husband and back again! :eek: No, really – I wasn’t eeeked-out at all. I call myself (and my boobs) multi-taskers! But I do think this goes back to my general temperment; not everyone could do this, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I was very much not the norm in this realm.
When you get a really good ejection reflex going, it kind of looks like a rainbird sprinkler. There’s not just one “hole” it comes out of. This was a big surprise to me the first time it happened. I ran to show MrWhatsit the cool thing that my breasts were doing. He was… somewhat less impressed than I was.
Count me in with those that are willing to accept Pullet’s information if he can provide some backup cites for it. If true, I would also like to know why, then, breastfed babies tend to have fewer illnesses/ear infections/etc. (Note that I said TEND TO, as this is just a statistical trend and doesn’t mean much when applied to individual babies. I myself had an exclusively breastfed baby that came down with a whomping case of RSV that led to a 3-week stay in the NICU.)
Seems intuitive, but is in fact wrong, according to a study I read a while back. I will attempt to find it (although I read it a few years ago and don’t remember the source, so this may be tough) but basically it said that the milk composition isn’t affected all that much by what the nursing mother is eating. I mean, the flavor might change if you’re eating a lot of garlic or whatever, but as far as the basic nutrients, if you’re not eating enough vitamins and minerals (calcium esp.) then your body will just take it from your stored reserves to use in the milk. This is of course only true up to a point; genuinely malnourished mothers will have insufficient or poor-quality milk. But just going on the all-french-fry-and-burger diet probably won’t hurt the milk all that much.
…okay, I just found a cite for this. So apparently, according to that article, the carbohydrate content of the milk varies hardly at all with maternal nutrition, the protein content varies slightly, and the fat content can vary quite a bit. For vitamins and minerals, it depends on the vitamin, but it says that when the mother is “chronically low” then the supply of that vitamin in the breastmilk can also be low. That seems to jibe with what I said previously; if you’re deficient in a particular nutrient, your body will use up your stored reserves for the breastmilk until your stored reserves are gone, and then your milk will be lacking it as well.
Bitty
Bitty.
Bitty!
I’m going to be critical here only because nobody cares about my opinion anymore.
Ummm, gross. If my kid could walk up to me and tell me that he wanted “booby” then that’s a cue that I shouldn’t be offering it anymore.
I was fortunate, that my mother came from a strong history of breastfeeding. I know I was one of the few at the hospital doing it when I had whiterabbit (although things had changed a lot by the time I had Young Tiger – at least it was no longer out of the norm), and got a few raised eyebrows if not the active discouragement others have recounted. But yes, I had whiterabbit back in the dark ages, medically speaking; you guys today have so much more legitimate support for what you’re doing, it makes me quite envious.
I’ll have to ask my mother how long she nursed me. I suspect quite a while; India in the 1950s really was a different world.
Some babies can walk at 10 months, and a lot of babies can say one or two words (like, “milk”) around a year old too. Should their parents wean them because they are now ambulatory and can use language?
(Hint: Babies need either breastmilk or formula until they are at least 12 months old.)
I can’t speak to the number of illnesses, but I have heard a theory that the reduced number of ear infections in breastfed babies may be attributed to physical reasons more than immunological. The theory is that breastfed babies are positioned more upright than bottlefed babies while eating. Additionally some suggest that the stronger suction needed to empty a breast leads to better draining of the eustachian tubes and therefore fewer ear infections.
I am unaware of any hard cites on this. I also know at least one breastfed baby who is scheduled for tubes due to recurrant ear infections, poor little guy.
My (American) best friend was born in India in 1963. Her mother was a physican; I’d be interested in knowing how long she was nursed.
Miz Grand, I’ll only say that communicating with a nursling is only a plus and no “cue” that it’s time to stop. It is because nursing was so actively discouraged in the middle part of the 20th century that we have these notions that only infants are nursed.
We’re all about fighting ignorance here, remember.
I care! To the extent that I want to change it. Seriously, as I said in the OP, my reaction was pretty much the same before I learned more about it.
I think one of the best answers I’ve heard to this objection is that babies ask to nurse from the day they’re born. To decide that when they can ask in English it’s time to stop is rather arbitrary. Do mute babies get to nurse longer?
BTW, I laughed my ass off at the “bitty” video. It’s also funny - when I saw Kathy Dettwyler speak, she talked about a mother who nursed her child until she was six. Dettwyler mentioned to this mother another mom who’d nursed till her child was eight. The mother’s response? “EWWWW! That’s just too long!” 
Sorry for the delay, WhyNot and MsWhatsit, I’m knee deep in finals week.
Credentials: I’ve been studying animal biology both as an undergraduate and as a veterinary student for the last 7 years. Even though my emphasis is on chickens, huge quantities of my study time have been devoted to the reproduction of mammals, mostly cattle, horses, swine, sheep and goats, as they are economically important. I’ve had a couple of courses that dealt exclusively with milk production and lactation. Though the classes that mentioned reproduction at all, and there have been a lot, touched on milk production for at least a lecture or three.
And, since I’ve been dealing with multiple animal species, the comparison to humans invariably turns up. I wouldn’t call myself an expert, even in non-humans, but I’ve got a stronger grounding than many of the nurses I’ve talked to.
Cites:
The best resource that I have on hand is Veterinary Immunology by Ian R. Tizzard, which is considered THE book on veterinary immunology.
It’s published by Saunders. My edition is from 2004. I’ll quote some stuff wholesale, starting from page 225
This particular text also illustrates how the immunoglobulin content of milk drops off after the first few sucklings, as the secretion changes from colostrum to milk, though only in a graph.
Here’s a page that talks about how the content of human milk changes over the course of lactation. If you look at this chart from that page, and scroll down to the measurements for IgG and IgA, you’ll see how they both drop off to near zero as lactation goes on.
Here is a study done in humans which demonstrated that the digestive tract of newborns lost the ability to absorb whole, functional immunoglobulins by as early as 30 hours old and as late as 3 days old.
So, I’ll stand by what I said before, namely
- human babies get a lot of the antibodies from mom while in the womb, across the thin placenta
- All mammals lose the ability to absorb functional antibodies from the milk quickly
- The milk of late lactation just doesn’t have a whole lot of antibody left in it anyhow.
I don’t think that what you’ve been hearing from the medical community has been wrong, per se, I think it’s just been the abbreviated version. Milk does have immunoglobulins in it, and breast feeding is important for multiple nutritional and psychological reasons. But antibodies ain’t one of those reasons after age 2 days for any mammal walking.
Pullet, this isn’t meant as a reflection on you, but every website that I can find with information about breastfeeding and immunology in human beings contradicts the conclusions you have reached about disappearing antibodies.
Nothing you quoted in your post warranted such conclusions in my opinion.
I cry fowl! Uh…foul!
If you are going to claim that the antibodies passed from mother to child through the milk disappear, where are the studies?
This one from the *New England Journal of Medicine* shows that antibodies are still there or they couldn’t be tested for.
The Center for Disease Control is a strong supporter of breastfeeding for disease prevention as in the Department of Health and Human Services. No one even raises the issue about passing on antibodies.
According to one science article that I read, European research is looking at human milk’s cancer fighting qualities in adult cancer patients.
I think this thread has just been terrific! I’ve never had my own child and I’ve always been curious about breastfeeding. Several of you have answered questions that I have wondered about for fifty years.
Don’t you ever be embarrassed to do discreetly in public what some mothers are equipped to do. If others get bent out of shape, they are the ones that need to go to the bathroom, not you. You are doing a womanly thing and you shouldn’t be made to feel that it’s yucky. It is not to be compared with taking a piss or a dump. Don’t let anyone denigrate your breasts like that.
No one here has tried to make those who choose to bottle feed feel guilty. Everyone has a right to her opinion – but not her own facts. Anecdotal information does not negate the statistics. It wasn’t the tone, it was the words in an otherwise pleasant thread.
CarnalK, you are more worried about wasting utensils than wasting the milk? 