advice please - blueish tinge to breast milk

[Janeway]

Yesterday, due to one thing and another, I didn't get to feed ds for approx 22hrs (don't worry, he was feeding, just not from me) and by the time we met up again I was bursting (no chance to express) but he refused (unheard of) so I expressed off 3oz from each side into sterilized bottle. Strange thing was it had the most peculiar blueish tinge.

It smelt fine so I stuck it in the fridge to give it later. Come the bedtime feed he refused the milk again, so (it having been re-warmed) it went down the drain.

Everything seams back to normal today, thick & creamy and obviously acceptable to ds, but I was wondering if anyone had come accross this before, or had an explaination so I can avoid it happening again - I somehow feel unclean at the thought of producing such objectionable milk

Could it be due to the length of time stored in the breast? This doesn't seam to link in with all I've been told though...

Some background info incase it's relevant - ds 6mnths, b/f min 3x daily, lunch, evening & middle of the night - more often on the 4 days I dont work.

Thanks in advance everyone

It might have been too much foremilk - sometimes if you have too much milk, it comes out too fast and they can't swallow it. And I think foremilk is watery, and can have a bluish tinge. I think this is right, but it may be total rubbish - I'm no milk expert! Hope all is ok today with feeding.

Normal, natural breast milk does have a blue tinge (certainly mine did) - this is the thirst quenching, protein-rich foremilk. The yellowy stuff is the hindmilk which is lower in protein, not as thirst-quenching and fattier (both equally vital!). I expect your son refused the milk because your breasts were either hard because they were full and difficult to latch on to or, more likely, because you had an overwhelming let-down because you were over-full - this means the milk shoots out down the baby's throat and they feel like they are drowning! I got this quite often in the early days of feeding. Expressing will have taken the edge off the fullness and slowed things down a bit making it easier for your baby. It's not your milk that's objectionable - just the over-fast delivery. Don't worry. Mind you, my ds only refused my milk with shrieking outrage once, and that was soon after a super-hot Thai curry...

Janeaway - perfectly normal - nothing wrong with your milk at all. If you actually expressed all your feeds throughout the day and lined them up they would all be different shades. The composition of breastmilk changes with every feed.
I found that when I was night shift and expressing the milk almost looked pale green.
Baby just refused for some other reason as they do now and again.
Carry on with confidence, your milk is definately perfect

Thanks for the info/opinions musica, sobernow & aloha - no nothing strange to eat the day before - certainly no blue food colourants (yuck!).

aloha - I express milk quite often and it's the first time I've seen it anything like this colour - can you realy build up 3oz of foremilk in each breast? - mine are only small! Also the high flow thing doesn't explain the rejection of the EBM.... but thanks for reinforcing my initial thoughts - I'm not usually prone to bouts of hypochondria (?sp) but I suppose we all have our moments.

I think in future the best thing to do will be to say "* off" to working through my lunch break, and go and feed my boy

Thanks again everyone for your time, and for caring enough to post.

Ta also Mears - you managed to post while I was typing response to the other 3 below.

I don't know much about breastmilk, but thought this might be helpful. Breastmilk is, I believe, an emulsion. It contains fats which don't dissolve in water, but can be carried in it-- they kind of clump together and don't separate out, but don't "dissolve" per se, ie don't distribute themselves equally. Here's a proper definition:

Emulsion: A Definition A stable dispersion of one liquid in a second immiscible liquid, such as milk (oil dispersed in water).

Immiscible means it doesn't mix and you might all know that, but thought I'd clarify it just in case. At any rate, that definition is from
surfactants.net/emulsion.htm

Ok. So we've got our emulsion going. In this case it's the mother's milk. Now, if you will, think of cow's milk. Y'know how full fat milk is, as they say, milky white and the skim (fat-free? what is it in the UK? ) milk is less white? That's because there is more fat in the full fat and less in the skim. The fat molecules reflect back the light in this particular emulsion. More fat = more reflection = more white. Less fat = less reflection = less white. Does that make sense? The reason for the blue then, is because when the milk reflects back less light, it doesn't do it indiscriminately. It reflects back the shorter wavelengths, which are the bluer ones. (Kind of like sound when you hear a car stereo do you hear the higher pitches or that damn boom-booming of the bass? The longer wavelengths of sound the bass-- make it through the car, through your walls, shut doors and windows and right into your sleeping ear. The higher pitches which would allow you to recognise the song are reflected back into the car. Um, the analogy was way too convulted, sorry.) Ok, must get back to point. The bluer wavelengths are reflected back into your eye and wham! Blue milk.

And then, what musica and aloha said. The foremilk has less fat.

Truly, it's not that I've got all this time on my hands.. I'm so far behind on email/phone calls/general keeping in touch that I don't know where to start. Plus, to me, emulsions are happy things.

Having always had plenty of blue milk I thought everyone had it! Never green, though...

Yes, you can definitely store 3oz of foremilk in small boobs! Yesyerday I didn't have time to express over a 9- hour day at work. When I got home at dd's bedtime she had one side and I expressed the other- the first 4oz were thin and blue, the cream didn't start coming till right at the end. Dd woke up 1/2 hour after going to sleep and had another 10 mins of sucking. Probably not enough cream the first time round!!

JJ - thanks for that mini essay - it constantly astounds me the wealth of information and experience that is so freely and willing shared on this site - I think we should consider setting ourselves up as a consulting agency - there can't be very much one could ask that one of us hasn't had experience of either professionally or personally. What an under-tapped rescource we women are (oops sorry to the guys on the site, not meaning to exclude you)

JJ, what have you been on? We scientists must get out more.............

Unfortunatley, we have all become brainwashed with advertising campaigns of thick creamy white desirable, satisfying milk. Normally of the formula variety. These are putting the power of suggestion onto our adult thought processes. Years ago we would exclusively breast feed our babies and not even express. We would never be any the wiser to the colour of he milk. All the MW's and HV's say that your baies breast milk is unique to your baby, 100% designed for your babe. If your baby is satisfied and growing does it matter what colour it is, does it make a difference to your baby?

The colour could indicate something is wrong though. Not in this case but it's best to check out anything you think is funny.

DebbieL, it was the combination of a bit too much Prosecco and a seriously slap happy mood.

I've heard that the reason for the foremilk/hindmilk thing is that after a while, breastmilk separates in breasts. Anyone know if this is true? Ie, when your body makes milk, it's all combined, but when it sits there for a while, the fattier bit separates from the other (like non-homogenized cows' milk). So when you don't breastfeed as often during a day, the first milk out has less fat than the milk the baby gets when you're breastfeeding constantly. (This also means that the last milk out will be higher fat-- you wouldn't lose any fat anywhere, it'd just come out differently.) Not better or worse, mind you, just different.

That's just speculation based on something I heard or read somewhere, though.