What on earth is colostrum ‘Harvesting’ ??

[Mumtothreegirlies]

I had my last baby 11 years ago. Breastfed all my babies but never was colostrum harvesting ever mentioned. Now on MN it appears all the pregnant ladies are doing it and bringing vials of it into hospital. What on earth is it for exactly?
why not just breastfeed your baby so they get it that way? Surely there aren’t millions of babies refusing to latch forever or how did humans survive for thousands of years? I’m really scratching my head here so please help me out 🤔

I do know what you mean op, people are over complicating life.

When I had DDs the midwives/hospital gave out info and syringes to all pregnant women at appointments and suggested you start from 37 weeks. People aren't over complicating life, they're doing what a relevant medical professional is recommending to them. I'd never heard of it until my midwife brought it up.

If you lose a lot of blood, it can delay milk production. Thyroid issues, having a CS, lots of things can delay milk production. That includes colostrum. It’s not automatically ‘just sitting there’ in plentiful quantities ready for squirting into the baby’s mouth. For some people it is but most people that’s not how it works, physiologically.

If you know your baby might need help maintaining their blood sugar (ie not have the reserves of brown fat to regulate their sugars, if they are small or prem or if mum has diabetes) then having a supply ready to give them can be so important; you might be fine and able to feed them directly straight away but if you have diabetes and end up with a haemorrhage and it takes days to get anything much out at all, if you’ve set yourself up with a bit to tide you over that is great, if you can/want to.

Historically if that happened, the baby would just be fed by someone else/with formula/with the precursor to formula. I’ve got my granny’s old midwifery dictionary with the recipe for milk for newborns written in the cover!

My firstborn ended up in NICU for 5 days with meconium aspiration and partially collapsed lung as a result. Baby was in an incubator on all the machines and I wasn't allowed to hold baby to feed until day 3 when machine support was gradually withdrawn as baby began recovering.

Because I had harvested colostrum and brought it with me, neonatal nurses were able to syringe that in to baby for all feeds in NICU until I was allowed to feed directly - you can't squirt through the walls of an incubator.

Because I had harvested colostrum at home already, I knew how to do it, knew how to hand express. It gave me something I could do to 'help' whist I was alone on the most depressing postnatal ward (where every mum there had a NICU baby) and meant I wasn't then learning how to do it at my most stressed and vulnerable time. It helped my mental health. It was also during COVID and the peak of the #butnotmaternity campaign which just made the whole ordeal even more isolating and lonely.

But, I had a stash of colostrum ready to go and I had practised the skill to express and (collect) more. It saved our breastfeeding journey - or should that be it gave us a chance to be a nursing dyad where we probably wouldn't have got there without it.

It really can be invaluable - labour and birth can be so completely unpredictable.

It’s a load of old bollocks.

Just another way to put people off actually breastfeeding. Just feed your baby as nature jntended. If your baby is very prem and can’t latch then fine. But for a normal full term baby, they just need to go on the boob and stay there.

According to the nhs website it’s only recommended to certain women and they include those who

• are taking beta blockers to control high blood pressure
• have developed pre-eclampsia during pregnancy
• are diabetic or have developed diabetes during pregnancy
• have polycystic ovary syndrome
• have breast hypoplasia (a condition in which the breast doesn’t fully develop) or you have
had breast surgery
• have a raised body mass index (BMI) • plan to give birth by Caesarean section

and babies who are

• large or small for their gestational age
• a twin or triplet
• have a cleft lip or palate
• have Down’s syndrome or a heart condition

and you’re advised NOT to collect if

• have a cervical suture (stitches) in place
• have experienced premature labour in the past
• have had contractions, vaginal bleeding and/or premature rupture of membranes (your
waters breaking early) during this pregnancy.

@Mumtothreegirlies I had a lot of pain meds! I had been in labour for 3 days, I would have taken anything they offered to make the pain stop

It might have been that simple for you but it's not for a lot of mothers and newborns. It wasn't for me with one of mine and I was very glad to have the colostrum syringes ready to go.

Mine was a normal full term baby.

Mine ended up in NICU.

You can't latch through an incubator.

What do you suggest nature intended for my baby then?

Surely there aren’t millions of babies refusing to latch forever or how did humans survive for thousands of years?
Many babies didn't survive.

God, there are some judgey people on this thread.

My DD wouldn't latch at birth. Turns out she had sepsis and she was rushed into NICU. I then developed a separate infection and was too ill to be sending my colostrum down to the NICU for the first 24hrs. I had tried colostrum harvesting before the labour without success but I wish i had been able to as it means DD could have had my colostrum from the outset. I am forever grateful to women who provide donor milk as DD had this in the absence of my colostrum, but its not the same.

But with the rate women are claiming they had issues latching so had to give up, it would mean that about 90% of humans were never breastfed which is just not true .they just had to be more patient. A baby won’t starve if it takes a day to latch properly or even longer. Mine was projectile vomiting for 3 weeks due to her metabolic disorder and she survived. Just a bit more patience and 9/10 it works out fine with no intervention.

I expressed some colostrum and collected it during the last few weeks of pregnancy. I ended up haemorrhaging and was in theatre for four hours while they stopped the bleeding, then out of it for several hours on the high dependancy unit afterwards.

DD was able to have colostrum while I was in theatre; avoiding formula - even one formula feed can have long term impacts on gut microbiome etc. It also meant I didn’t need to worry about nipple confusion etc as she was fed straight through the syringe. She breastfed happily when we were back together, and it still feeding at 2. She never had a bottle, I never expressed, and we had no problems.

It was also handy as I’d learned how to hand express so when my milk came in and I was engorged I could express some off so she could latch. On our first night home from the hospital she was very tired and wasn’t feeding much - I panicked, and was able to give her a couple of syringes to reassure myself and ensure she was fed.

The other syringes were used a few months older when she had her first little cold/eye infections etc as a little power shot of immunity.

Not necessary for everyone - but in situations like mine where you are in theatre afterwards, or where you want to absolutely avoid formula supplementation it can be very useful.

Are you under the impression that infant mortality has always been as low as it is now op?

I support mothers to BF on the postnatal ward.

Often babies feed a bit at birth and then just can't, for whatever reason. They get sleepy and hard to rouse and feed, blood sugar drops and the staff get twitchy. The mum is then asked to hand express which is really tough to do when you're under pressure (as it inhibits the oxytocin) and being interrupted every 5 mins by Bounty ladies/audiologists/physios/tea ladies. Mum gets stressed, and then baby is given formula and then the top up trap cycle begins ...

If parents bring in syringes full of colostrum this keeps the MWs happy that baby is fed, can raise baby's blood sugar and get them to be a bit more awake. It wasn't a thing when I had mine years ago but I wish it had been.

It's great that your colostrum was "spraying out" but I have never seen this from any stressed out mother on the ward in 8 years.

My daughter also has sepsis due to undiagnosed metabolic disorder galactosaemia. She was forced onto specialised formula as she had liver and kidney failure too.

My colostrum came out in thick beads, almost like cream and wasn’t watery at all. My baby was predicted to be large for gestational age which is why I was recommended to do it, incase latching didn’t happen. As mentioned I was v lucky baby did latch and am still exclusively breastfeeding, but very conscious that this isn’t the case for everyone.

'5those African tribe ladies' that comment reminds me of people saying to me animals mange to give birth/ breast feed all the time. They don't lots of them die. With a farming background I know how much help a lot of baby animals are given. I know animals have CS and birth injuries.
If you have colostrum saved up it's a back up. I had it for both of mine and I used it all whilst getting them going in the first few days. I breastfeed for 17 month and then 2 years. It gave me confidence to keep working on the latch. I knew they weren't starving. I put in on the nipple sometimes to get them going. I'd recommend the 1ml ones.

Maybe I wasn’t stressed then. The ward I was on was full of women breastfeeding with no issues so I obviously got very lucky to be in a calm environment that most likely helped. We were all chatting together it was lovely.

Are you trying to wind people up?

Long time BF supporter here. I have supported literally hundreds of mothers of full term healthy babies who just could not get breastfeeding to work well for mum and/or baby.

So many of them say to.us "I thought this was supposed to be the easiest thing, just put them on the boob".

I'm glad you've had an easy experience but believe me, it's not that easy for everyone.

I read it varies according to the mothers. Mine was always like a sticky chalky coloured watery Liquid. But can be thick and white or even yellow

No of course not I’m not an idiot. Are you suggesting that 2000 years ago 90% of babies didn’t breastfeed?

No one is forced into it, I can't fathom at all why a mother having more choice is an issue for anyone. Some women don't want to breastfeed for reasons that aren't anyone else's business and this option, should they wish to take it up, means they can give their baby colostrum. Others like to do it just in case they aren't able to get that early skin to skin and feed in- but should things go well they don't have to give the syringes at all as the body produces more ready for baby so they can breastfeed. Others who aren't sure what they want to do it affords options without baby missing out on arguably the most important nutrition.

I mean surely you realise this isn't everyone's universal experience?

I was going to say this. OP you've had a very sick baby - and I'm sorry you had such a hard time, that sounds horrific- so surely you know not everyone around you had that experience? And that translates to BF too.

You.may have had very free flowing colostrum and that meant no one was worried about your child getting any so there was no.pressure and you relaxed and got.on with it. But if someone is told "you HAVE to get something into your baby now", they try, nothing happens ... the stress begins.