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It is well established that with very few exceptions, human milk is the preferred first food for infants. While the benefits of breastfeeding/receiving human milk are considerable and influence the development of multiple systems in the infant, perhaps the best known benefits of human milk are its immunoprotective properties. Worldwide, breastfeeding is associated with reduced risk of infectious diseases in infants, and these protections persist even in highly hygienic conditions such as the United States (Bartick & Reinhold 2010). Many immune factors are found in human milk, including immune cells, cytokines that regulate immune responses, and secretory Immunoglobulin-A (sIgA), perhaps the most common immunoprotein in human milk. It is well established that there is considerable variation in the immune factors in milk between individual mothers and between populations. It is also known that many of the immune factors in milk are highly responsive, changing in response to active infection of either the mother or infant (blog post on this topic

read more Milk remembers: Immune factors in milk “remember” childhood environments – repost from Biomarkers & Milk

Pumping experiences survey – Post 1 of the Series   First off, a giant THANK YOU to all the mothers who participated in the online survey. Your assistance was amazing! We started the pumping experiences survey to see how mothers would respond to differences in pump output, based on their normal pumping experiences. We had predicted that mothers who had dramatic changes in output in the experiment – either randomized to much more or much less than they typically produced – would have strong reactions to the images and the responses would tell us a lot about how women perceive their milk supply. The survey randomly assigned each mother to one of three images showing expressed breast milk– one photo showed 1 ounce of pumped milk, the second photo showed 6 ounces of milk, and the final photo showed 12+ ounces of milk. The volumes were classified as “low”, “intermediate”, and “high” volume. The photos created an experimental condition where

read more Repost: Pumping experiences survey, pt1