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Breastfeeding
Born for Breastfeeding
Just as your body is designed for pregnancy and childbirth, so too you were made for breastfeeding your baby. (And you don’t have to do anything to prepare for it!)
By Rachel Levine, BFA, FLC, IBCLC
You may not have realized it, but you’ve been preparing for breastfeeding all your life, and never more so than during these months of pregnancy. All you have to do is understand the process and trust that your body will know what to do when your baby is born.
Budding Breasts
When you were just a fetus inside your mother, your breasts began as “buds.” Inside each bud, a basic mammary duct system, which produces and delivers breast milk, formed and grew along with you as you progressed through childhood.
When you reached puberty, hormones released during your menstrual cycle triggered breast development. Estrogen produced during the first part of the cycle helped the breasts to develop milk ducts, and progesterone released during the second part of the cycle stimulated the development of the milk-producing glands. This growth continued throughout puberty.
Colostrum
Now that you’re pregnant, your body is quickly preparing for breastfeeding. Between weeks 16 and 22 your breasts begin to make colostrum, the super-concentrated first milk produced for your baby. The areola (dark area of skin surrounding the nipple) usually darkens even more and gets larger, as does the nipple. Even now, you may notice some clear, yellow or white drops of colostrum leaking from your nipples, particularly when you take a warm shower or bath.
Once your baby is born, breast milk develops in stages, taking about 2 weeks to become mature milk. First, it is pure colostrum. This highly nutritious, concentrated food is packed with antibodies that are key to your baby’s health and are not present in his system until his first breastfeed. The colostrum coats his stomach, creating a barrier through which most bacteria and viruses cannot pass and decreasing your newborn’s risk for many types of infections. It helps protect his digestive tract, mucous membranes, throat, lungs and intestines, and helps prevent him from becoming sensitive to the food you eat. In turn, it lessens his risk for future food allergies. This coverage remains for as long as you are breastfeeding him.
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