My friend told me a story about when she was pregnant and her milk suddenly showed up unexpectedly. She was out to lunch with her husband and mother-in-law when she suddenly realized everyone was staring at her chest.  She looked down and was horrified to see that her breasts were leaking milk right through her shirt and everyone at the table was watching, wide-eyed.  Without warning, her mother-in-law burst into tears of happiness, announcing to the whole restaurant that her soon-to-be-born grandchild would indeed have milk to drink.  My friend was a little horrified, but at the same time was glad to know that she wasn’t going to have any problems with her milk.

My milk didn’t show up until after my baby was born, but I did have some warning signs that it was on its way. My breasts getting bigger was the first sign, but I think it was when I was around seven months pregnant that I started feeling soreness in my breasts that I had never felt before. It wasn’t necessarily painful, but it felt like something was going on. Changes were happening, and I was happy at the prospect of the milk getting ready to make its appearance.

When I was closer to my due date I noticed what looked like dried colostrum on my nipples. There wasn’t a lot of it and it wasn’t bothersome, but I was really happy when I noticed it. I think I was afraid that my milk might not ever show up and I wouldn’t be able to nurse my baby, but seeing this let me know that it was on its way.

I never did have a moment when any milk dripped out before I had my baby. Believe me, though, when I say that it didn’t take long after labor until suddenly my breasts were huge and I had more than enough milk available. If I hadn’t been looking for the signs beforehand then I may not have noticed all the changes my breasts were going through. For this reason, I urge you to not panic if you don’t notice any huge changes to your breasts indicative of milk on the way.

After all, if you’re anything like me you’ll have plenty of opportunities after the baby is born to have your milk leak while at a restaurant with in-laws.

This month, California Milk Processors filed a lawsuit against a mom who decorated shirts with “Got Breastmilk?”, a take on the national “Got Milk” campaign.

Mountntop Designs & Baby Bugs Clothing, run by Barbara Holmes out of her home in Alaska sells adorable tie-dye and batik baby clothes. I especially like her “Don’t Moose With Me” shirts. But a “Got Breast Milk?” shirt is what caught the attention of the California Milk Processor Board, the entity behind the “Got Milk” campaign.

The board filed a lawsuit claiming that Homles’ shirts would confuse consumers. They demanded that Holmes cease selling the shirts, and to ship the board all the t-shirts, onesies and equipment used to make them, as well as an accounting of any profits, “to avoid resorting to litigation.”

Barbara hired her own lawyer and sent a letter back to the board, defending herself as a pro-nursing advocate, and that her right to parody the “Got Milk?” slogan is protected under the free speech provisions of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

She says “They say I’m going to confuse milk consumers. How can you get confused between a boob and a bottle of milk from the store? They’re two different kind of jugs.”

Well, quite, although I might not put it exactly like that in court. Hopefully it will never go that far. The board has written letters to other mommy businesses making similar shirts, including a mom in Oregon, who never heard back from the board after the first letter.

“Got Milk” parodies are very popular, there’s over 4,000 “Got Milk” inspired shirts, hats and baby clothes at CafePress, including ones that concern me more than the breast milk shirts. How about “Got Kalashnikov” and “Got Crack” – which you can buy printed on a bib. Why anyone would want one of those confuses me much more than the difference between cow milk and breast milk.

Could I suggest that the California Milk Processing board’s lawyers, who of course have the right to protect their trademark, refocus their attention to the more disturbing uses of their slogan?

My husband is adamant about not letting our daughter eat dairy. He has cited many studies showing the negative effects of dairy on the body, including being linked to allergies, and even cancer. He can get quite firm when it comes to dietary concerns for the household, while I’m more of a everything-in-moderation type of person. This means he doesn’t want our daughter drinking whole milk as pediatricians recommend for those transitioning from breast milk or formula.

I certainly have nothing against milk or dairy in general. Whole milk is the perfect next phase liquid for babies. They get the fat they need for their growing brain, plus calcium and other important vitamins. However, I want to respect my husband’s demand request so I started researching good alternatives for whole cow’s milk. Unfortunately, there isn’t really much out there. The top alternatives seem to be rice milk, soy milk, goat’s milk, none of which have the good high-fat content that is so beneficial for a growing baby and child.

I started to think that we’d have to go with whole cow’s milk after all. Then I started thinking: there’s got to be millions of kids out there whose parents are vegetarians and don’t give their kids milk. What do they do? I then realized that while whole cow’s milk is a convenient way to package the nutrients you should serve to your child, you can get all these nutrients from different foods. For example, we can take soy milk (which we already drink; we don’t consume cow’s milk) and feed her that while supplementing the fat that’s missing from other foods.

Avocados with it’s superior fat content is a good supplement to add to her diet. I can also give her bread drizzled with olive oil. I can put some sunflower seeds and other nuts through the food processor mix with sugar, a bit of oil or maybe soy milk and turn that into a paste for breads, or keep it dry an sprinkle it on cereals or just feed it to her as it is.

I think we’ve got a good game plan. For parents who are concerned only with what cows are fed (feeds with preservatives, etc.) and how that affecs the milk, you can also try USDA-approved Organic milk.

Wish us luck!

Every mom experiences this to some degree. Whether weaning from breast or formula to cow’s milk, babies and toddlers are notoriously awkward about drinking enough milk.

Pediatricians usually recommend around 16oz of cow’s milk a day for a one-year-old. My one-year-old was totally typical of weaning babies and thought he should drink one sip, then nurse 14 times a day. I despaired of ever getting him to drink enough milk to wean him without worrying that he would get enough nutrients. Other moms of one-year-olds have the same struggle weaning from formula.

Here’s some tips and tricks to encourage your baby to drink more milk.

• Mix pumped breastmilk or formula with the cow’s milk to get them used to the taste gradually.
• Try different cups – different styles of sippy cups, spouts, straws, valves or no valves, or even cups with no lids – most babies can drink from a cup with a little help. Let your baby pick out a cup. Yes, your son will probably want Dora The Explorer. Better Dora than no milk!
• Pretend it’s your milk. Pour a cup. Drink. Baby will want some. No, this is mine. Are you sure you want some? Well, ok, I guess you can have some.
• Flavor the milk. Babies often like vanilla, from a tiny drop of vanilla flavoring. Chocolate is another fave, a tip-of-a-teaspoon of Nesquik makes milk very chocolaty for a baby so you don’t need to worry too much about the sugar.
• Color the milk. My son used to insist blue milk tasted better than white milk. Whatever, dude, as long as you are drinking it, it’s all good. Use a tiny amount of food dye, or health food stores sell vegetable-based food dyes.
• Have something dry to eat, like crackers, or toast. Then offer milk. Thirsty babies usually drink.
• Milk on cereal counts, as does milk in sauces. Mac and cheese, and many pasta sauces have milk in them.
• Cheese counts too. And yogurt, and yogurt or milk in smoothies.
• Some babies like soy milk, especially the flavored kinds. Pediatricians don’t usually recommend soy milk unless baby is lactose-intolerant but a cup of soy milk does have protein, calcium and vitamins. Mixing soy and cow’s milk together tastes like soy milk, and has the goodness of cow’s milk.
• Temperature. Try cold, room temperature, warm. A friend’s baby only drank milk with ice chips. (Be careful with ice cubes, they could be a choking hazard.)
• Froth it up. A $2 cappuccino milk frother + warm milk = milk froth baby can eat with a spoon. Big hit with babies learning to use a spoon.

Mix it up. If one trick stops working, try another, and another, and another.

If you are worried baby will want to drink blue milk (or chocolate milk or whatever) forever, gradually reduce the amount of food coloring (or Nesquik ect.) until she’s drinking plain milk. And most importantly, don’t pressure your baby or insist they drink their milk. If anything, it will make them less likely to want to drink it, and give them a negative association with the new milk.

And good luck, Mama! It will seem like the battle of the century but one day your baby will be drinking milk like a champ. Promise!

What tips and tricks have you used? Share your secrets!

I will never take milk for granted again.

A couple of days back, I posted a piece on pathogenic bacteria in milk. And now comes the rBGH issue.

rBGH ? it’s short for recombinant bovine growth hormone. I know that it was concocted by no other than the chemical giant Montsanto and that its trade name is Posilac. And I know what it can do to animals and humans. What I didn’t know was that rBGH is still being used in dairy cows in the US!

The recent report in CBNNews really shocked me as a European resident because this product has been banned in Europe for almost a decade now due to concerns over public health and animal welfare.

So what?s all the fuss about rBGH? What does it actually do?

Simply put, the hormone makes the cows produce more milk. According to the Montsanto website, Posilac ?safely enhances milk production and serves as an important tool to help dairy producers improve the efficiency of their operations.?

So why aren?t the EU countries, Canada and many other countries allowing the use of this supposedly ?safe? product?

In Europe, the EU Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Animal Welfare (SCAHAW) banned Posilac because of its adverse effect on the animals. Cows treated with Posilac develop a lot of diseases including mastitis and reproductive problems. There were also concerns as to its effects on human health but this line of thinking wasn?t pursued any further because animal welfare issues alone led to the banning of the hormone in the EU.

In addition to lots of milk, cows treated with Posilac also produce higher-than-normal amounts of a growth factor called IGF-1. And this is where the human health concerns come in: IGF-1 is identical in both cows and humans ?and it is found in the milk. That means, if we drink milk from rBGH-treated cows, we are actually taking in a lot of IGF-1 ? a suspected carcinogen.

American consumers are now waking up to the fact that the milk they drink may actually be tainted. Doctors are warning their patients about rBGH and some food companies such as Starbucks are planning to use rBGH-free milk only. There are attempts to label milk products whether they were exposed to rBGH or not but it seems that this is not strictly regulated and may even be misleading.

Source:

CBNNews 23 Jan 2008

It was already reported way back in 2004 that certain bacteria (both beneficial and harmful types) may actually survive pasteurization 1 and may therefore be present in that carton of milk or that yogurt you just bought today. This is a very disturbing thought especially for mothers but unfortunately very true.

This was confirmed by a recent study by scientists at the University of Liverpool in the UK 2. One of the harmful bacterial species identified was Mycobacterium paratuberculosis which can possibly cause Crohn`disease. The bacterium makes the cows ill and then finds its way into the milk. Crohn’s disease affects millions of people worldwide and presents with symptoms such as diarrhea, bleeding, and inflammation of the intestine.

Unfortunately, current methods in milk and dairy processing cannot guarantee that these products are completely bacteria-free. If milk is heated up too much, all microbes as well as vitamins and nutrients will be simply go up in smoke, leaving nothing but fat behind.

Some experts recommend the use of raw milk from organic farms. However, although raw milk is a very healthy alternative, there is still no guarantee that it is disease-free.

1 Paratuberculosis Awareness & Research Association (PARA) Press Release, 9 August 2004

2University of Liverpool (2007, December 13). How Bacteria In Cows’ Milk May Cause Crohn’s Disease. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 1, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com? /releases/2007/12/071210104002.htm

If you are pregnant or breastfeeding at this time of the year, you better stock up on your vitamin D supplements. Sunlight exposure is a good source of vitamin D however, those of you living in the colder regions won’t be seeing much of it for the next few months because of the winter season. Occasional peeks from the sun may not provide the dosage of Vitamin D necessary to benefit pregnant women and women who are nursing.

What is Vitamin D?

Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin and is produced when the skin is exposed to sunlight, specifically ultraviolet B rays. It plays an important role in the maintenance of the body’s system. It regulates calcium and phosphorus levels in the blood to maximize absorption in the body. It also promotes bone formation and helps in strengthening the body’s immune system.

There are very few foods which naturally contain significant amounts of vitamin D. These include fish liver oil, fatty fish oils which are found in salmon, mackerel, sardines, tuna and eel, mushrooms and egg. Most of the dietary sources of vitamin D come in fortified form hence we have fortified milk, soy milk, cereals and the like.

The U.S. Department of Health strongly encourages pregnant and breastfeeding women to take Vitamin D supplements in the winter months to ensure that babies will not develop rickets or seizure. The Department has also noted a rise in the number of cases of Vitamin D deficiency among children in Asia, the Middle East, and in the Afro-Carribean regions. This is due to the fact that skin color also influences vitamin D absorption. The darker the skin, the less sunlight is absorbed. But fret not, the deficiency can also be remedied by taking Vitamin D supplements.

A Dutch study published in the British Journal of Nutrition has shown that where pregnant women consumed organic dairy products instead of the non-organic version there was significant reduction in the occurrence of eczema (36%) and of wheezing (11%) in their children by the age of 24 months.

This is part of an ongoing study called the Koala Birth Cohort Study which is comparing the benefits of a consumption of organic products with non-organic.

Organic Dairy Lowers the Risk of Eczema in Early Childhood

Organic Milk Reduces Eczema

Buy Organic Online: The Top Websites

The previous belief that children usually outgrow dairy allergies by the age of three has been disproved by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Apparently only 19% of children outgrew this allergy by the age of 4 and 21% (over one fifth) of children still had not outgrown it by the age of 16. Those children who suffered from allergic rhinitis and / or asthma were less likely to outgrow their allergy.

Also research at the the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology in Belgium is using the natural bacteria, lactococcus lactis, to try to treat dairy allergies and intolerance.

Dairy allergies and intolerances are steadily increasing and can produce a range of symptoms including digestive problems, respiratory problems, skin problems and behavioural problems. Some people find that they have problems with cow?s milk products but are OK with other milks such as goat, sheep and buffalo.

Many Kids May Not Outgrow Cow’s Milk Allergy

Dairy Allergies (Milk Allergies)

Lactose Intolerance and Dairy Allergy

Dairy Bug Used In Allergy Research

Dairy Free from Cradle to Grave