to think that breastmilk should be sold in the supermarket?

[paranoid2android]

Wouldn't it make sense? Then every baby could benefit from breastmilk, even if their mums don't can't/don't want to breastfeed. Women could sell access breastmilk to 'farms' to stock the shops.It does strike me as being quite bizarre that we feed powdered milk from a cow to our children, that mothers sharing breastmilk would be seen as unusual.

I can't think of anything more physically or emotionally stressful to a new mother than having to care for a poorly baby. And babies that aren't breastfed, as a group, have a higher incidence of respitory and gastric illnesses, including those requiring hospitalisation.

Anyway, lactation is the physiological norm for a mother with a small baby. I've yet to see an artificial process or product replace any other biological function (when that biological function is working well, as lactation usually does if give half a chance), in such a way as to improve health outcomes.

In a nutshell there Shagmund.

It's what are bodies are designed to do, it's what our babies are designed to drink.

Milly - it's ok to be wrong on the internet, you know! :) Lots of people post something that's not quite what they meant to say on reflection - have done it myself a few times. Best thing to do is to say 'oops, sorry' - rather than try to make it sound as if you said something else (impossible when you have written the flippin thing down and it's still there!). Also rather than throwing a strop and saying you're not going to post any more because it's not you that's wrong but other people....come on, come back and post again.

I think it's good if people with a science/nutrition background post on relevant threads as it can be helpful to have that perspective.

BTW, apropos of another aspect, I have read elsewhere (not just in the 'GM cows' link below) of research going on into reproducing a synthesised breastmilk for commercial sale. If one was produced that was an improvement on existing formulas, then that would be a good thing, IMO. The biggest difficulty would be to synthesise antibodies which remained 'live' in the milk after collection, processing and packaging.

Someone correct me if I am wrong but I though that the hormone cascade during childbirth prepped the guts to be more efficient and absorb more nutrients/calories from food (oxytocin amongst others) so that when mum ate she got more from her food than a non-bfing/birthing person.

I'm sure I also read that synthetic oxytocin floods the body and switches off some of the extra receptors so digestion isn't as efficient if you have a induced labour or managed 3rd stage. This wouldn't outweigh the clinical need for those interventions though if they were necessary for mother's/baby's health.

Can I find the links though......

I've read that all those things happen during pregnancy so women absorb more nutrients etc then but nothing that lasts after birth

Truth, I too have read that breastfeeding mothers get 'more' out of their food, but apparently that's the case in pregnancy, too. The 'production' of a baby, placenta, amniotic fluid, her own extra fat totals (lets say) X thousand calories. But she does not need X thousand extra calories to do this - something happens to the metabolism in pregnancy (and I'd have to look it up to see what ) and this process (as I understand it) continues during lactation. Maybe the process gets a further hormone boost during childbirth, too - have not heard that personally.

I have not heard or read about the switching off effect of synthetic oxytocin.

There's some interesting stuff here:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3006166/

jn.nutrition.org/content/133/6/1997S.full

More oxitocin is produced during pregnancy, breastfeeding increases production too but not at the same levels as when pregnant.

Synthetic oxytocin to induce labour can interfere with natural production which can increase the chances of heavy bleeds after birth

It looks like it was Michel Odent who has done some of the work in this area (or at least brought it together).

There is some studies done on 'oxytocin-induced desensitization of the oxytocin receptors' and the way in which the synthetic oxytocin doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier but natural oxytocin does plus the pulse vs continuous stream of natural vs synthetic oxytocin which has raised some questions but as yet no real answers.

Information here, here and here.