I’ll never forget the first time that I got sick shortly after my oldest daughter was born. I had a pretty nasty sinus infection and as the only one who was around her nearly all day long, I was so nervous that I’d pass on my germs to her weak immune system and get her sick. “Just keep nursing her,” my doctor kept telling me. “You’re passing on the antibodies your body is creating to her to help her immune system and that will help keep her from getting sick.” While I knew breastfeeding was good for her, I didn’t know all that it was capable of.
When my second daughter was younger she often had blocked tear ducts in one of her eyes. The solution from the doctor (other than a warm compress)? Breastmilk. She told me to put a few drops of my breastmilk in her eye to help unclog the tear duct. And sure enough, it worked.
Regardless of how you choose to feed your child, I think we can all agree that the benefits of breastmilk are pretty incredible. Vicky Greene, a mom of three and a Biosciences student at South Devon College in Paignton, England posted a photo on her Facebook page of the microbiology research project she is doing.
Each petri dish contains the bacteria M. Luteus. Greene added breastmilk from a mother of a 15-month-old and a 3-year-old to the center of the petri-dish. The photo speaks for itself when it comes to the results. As Greene said in the photo, “See the clear bit around the discs- that’s where the proteins in the milk have inhibited the bacteria.”
It proves that breastmilk does far more than we’ve ever imagined. Greene also mentioned that she’s had similar results with MRSA and E. coli.
Greene said it best, “The future is bright, the future is breastmilk.”