Milk production from a dairy farm perspective
I grew up on a dairy farm, and applied lots of my dairy knowledge to my own life when DS was born, as far as BF goes. It came up with some friends recently, and they thought it was helpful...so I decided to post the same text here. Maybe it will help someone out...
Here goes:
What aspects of cows' udders and womens' breasts are the same?
leaking before delivery
engorgement
colostrum
leaking at milking time
having let-downs at the regular time
achieving let-downs for pumping (assuming you can relax then, some cows can't, more on that later)
What BF stuff do I think is a load of hooey, based on my knowledge of the dairy industry? There are two big ones:
1. That breastmilk is different from day to day to ensure that baby is getting exactly what s/he needs from any given BF session. Milk is milk - antibodies come and go, but the nutritional components are the same. Yes, it's the perfect food for a baby, but it's not going to calibrate itself independently - it all relates back to what the producer is eating and drinking. The milk is in the udder/breast before milking time - it takes the time from the last milking session to be produced, and it takes ten minutes or less to completely milk an udder empty. Sure, if you keep the pump on for longer, you'll get more milk out, but a drizzle...nothing to write home about. The same goes for breastmilk. Breasts get full, and then get drained. There is foremilk and hindmilk, but the hindmilk is not created as the baby nurses - it is already in there, waiting to get going. If the baby needs more milk after the breast is emptied out, well - the baby will nurse again sooner, and signal the breast to create more milk next time. But the bulk of the milk is not produced as the baby feeds. This is something I've heard often, and I would like to know who has been milking women and tracking what it. Based on my dairy knowledge, it just doesn't work that way.
2. That all women can BF. Some cows, regardless of the size of their udders, just don't have any milk production. We breed for this stuff - it is tracked carefully - and sometimes breeding back to get a high producer fails. Why this is, I cannot tell you, but it is. So any pressure on women that they didn't try hard enough is crap. If not all cows, bred for milk production, can do it, why should all women be able to do it?
As for pumping - I did it often, and it was a huge help to me knowing how the process works with cows. There is the cadence to the pump action, and that is the first thing I would listen to. It got so that I could hear it and I'd let down right away. I have always found milking the cows relaxing, and think that all pregnant women would benefit from the experience of watching cows get milked. It would put a lot of puzzle pieces together. Here is my method for pumping (and getting DS to BF when he was a newbie).
1. Massage breast/udder sort of roughly, to loosen things up; with cows, this is the washing stage, when warm water is used to clean off any manure stuck to the udder. In women, the same principle works - warmth is relaxing, and the massage is like the rooting reflex (calves have it too!)
2. Figure out the cadence of the sucking reflex, whether you're BF or pumping, and hum to it. Find music that matches up. Trust me - cows milk more when they listen to music that matches up to the cadence of the milk machines, and I used this tactic when pumping. If you're in a sucky location when you pump, close your eyes and hum. Let the hum relax you - cows do it, and you are smarter than a cow!
3. If you need to manually express, use your palm tp support the breast and the base of your thumb to squeeze the entire aerola down. This is exactly how you milk a cow, except with a way longer nipple. EXACTLY THE SAME.
4. Make sure the baby has the whole aerola in his or her mouth - again EXACTLY THE SAME, since the aerola/nipple combo is the same as a teat.
5. Make sure you empty the breast as best you can, and keep it clean and well lubricated where it gets wet - you will go a long way towards avoiding mastitis (cows get it too, for the same reasons!)
That said - all the breast ailments out there can happen to udders, and treatment for both breasts and udders is the same. The SAME!
I know the comparison of women to cows can be offensive, and ask that it not be taken so - at the end of the day, it's all about the mammary glands, right? There are so many similarities between cows and women, IME, and knowing about dairy really did help me.
Please post questions if you have any...
Petra
Mother of Two
Owner of BaDumBums