Your breastmilk is perfectly designed for the nourishment of your baby.
Dispelling the myths of growth charts, iron levels, and Vitamin D in breastmilk
Something I see so often in the motherhood journey is the persistent belief or pressure to accept that breastmilk is not enough.
In the hospital, new mothers are often told their colostrum isn’t enough to nourish their babies. They are pushed to accept formula, otherwise they are treated as if they are starving their babies. They’re scared into the idea that their bodies are broken if milk isn’t flowing immediately, even though colostrum is the first milk and most protective substance for a newborn belly.
If a mother survives this pressure without giving in to any form of formula supplementation, the next round of pressure comes from the pediatrician for either two things: growth rates or nutrients.
If a baby is growing slowly, or on the smaller side, pediatricians begin to push the idea of formula supplementation.
As a mother, did you know that none of these growth rate charts they utilize are based on breastfed babies? All of the “evidence” they use for “proper” growth rates were created around formula fed babies nearly 50 years ago.
To me, this completely nullifies their “standard” idea of how a baby “should” grow and what it means to be “on track” for the medical model.
Here’s the most definitive way to know your baby is getting enough breast milk and growing properly:
Your baby eats, has plenty of wet diapers, and poops consistently.
As long as your baby is expelling and growing (even slowly), your baby is getting enough to eat.
Furthermore, the medical model seems to believe that breastmilk isn’t nutritionally enough, despite the fundamental truth that it is biologically designed for your baby.
Pediatricians often push the idea or belief that breastmilk is deficient in nutrients that a baby “needs,” including iron or vitamin d, which they then suggest either supplementing with formula or putting babies on oral vitamins.
Here’s what you need to know about iron:
Full term babies are born with the perfect amount of iron stores to nourish their growing bodies up until around 6 months of age. The two things that impact these levels are immediate cord clamping and prematurity. (Although, I’d argue that if a baby is born before 34 weeks and stays attached to the placenta until it stops pulsating, it’s very likely they will receive enough iron stores to last them.) Receiving the blood of the placenta is pivotal and key to creating an iron rich body in newborn babies.
Secondly, a mothers milk has more bioavailability than any form of formula or supplementation of fortified iron. Breastmilk combines vitamin c and copper to deliver iron to the baby, making it 50% more likely to be absorbed than fortified iron. It is believed than an infant can only absorb 5-10% of fortified iron and it can cause toxicity in excess. Excess iron stores can wreck havoc in the gut, causing inflammation and other issues.
I wonder why OBGYNs and pediatricians never talk about the blood in the placenta or iron toxicity?
Here’s what you need to know about Vitamin D:
“Vitamin” D is actually a hormone, not a vitamin, and when you supplement D3, you’re actually ingesting a steroid.
For the sake of understanding, I will refer to D as “hormone D” for the rest of this explanation.
Our most powerful form of Hormone D comes from full sun exposure. Depending on our melanin levels, body composition, latitude, and season, 10-50 minutes of morning or evening sun exposure is enough to get our daily dose of this hormone. Our body instantly turns sunlight into Hormone D, which then is stored in our fat tissues to be used as necessary.
There are two things that your body needs in order to metabolize Hormone D: magnesium and cholesterol. When there is a suggested hormone d deficiency, the best thing someone can do is increase magnesium intake, be sure to be ingesting a good amount of healthy fats, coupled with consistent sun exposure, NOT supplement D3.
A study of breastfeeding women revealed that supplementation of D3 did little to nothing to raise the hormone levels, which to me speaks to my fundamental belief that the levels of Hormone D in breastmilk are biologically protective to the infant.
Excessive Hormone D in the body can cause the following issues:
Depletes potassium levels in the kidneys
Blocks Vitamin A (retinol) absorption + use in the body, causing mitochondrial dysfunction
Depletes magnesium levels, which is vital for cell function
Increases iron storage, which as seen above, causes inflammation and wreaks havoc in the gut
It is my belief that breastmilk has low Hormone D levels to ensure the necessity of consistent sun exposure in both breastfeeding mothers and infants. Adequate sunlight ensures nutrient absorption through the cells, eating food alone will not provide this. (If you’ve ever visited or lived near the tropics or equator, you may have noticed a decrease in physical appetite due to the sun.)
If you live in a higher latitude, with overcast skies, and long winters, here’s what I suggest:
Get as much sunlight as possible, even if it is overcast
Avoid blue light exposure after sunset (stay off of phones, laptops, or tvs; bonus points if you can utilize candle night or red light as the dominant light source)
Take cod liver oil if pregnant or breastfeeding to support your hormone d levels
If you find yourself tempted to take D3, use it on your abdomen, feet, or throat area rather than taking it internally
When it comes to pushed supplementation, I have yet to hear about an OBGYN, medical midwife, or pediatrician talk in length about the true reason why they “deficiencies” exist. Instead of giving you the positives of why breastmilk is constituted the way it is, things that can naturally support human biology, and the negatives of supplementation, they continue to push risky and under-researched ideologies that potentially harm mothers + babies.
Breastmilk is perfectly constituted to meet a baby’s biological needs. This is ensured by the receptors in the nipple responding to the saliva composition of the child. The very process of breastfeeding is to be the manifest response of the infant’s constitution.
Formula supplementation and oral vitamins are inferior to a mother’s love, intuition, and breastmilk, all of which are instinctual answering the call of an infant’s needs. There is no intelligence like the maternal one and biologically, there is no better choice than breastmilk.
Human milk is made for human babies. It is enough, nutritionally and emotionally.
If you’d like to learn about breastmilk + iron levels, head here. Although, I highly recommend going through the following resource on Vitamin D & learning about iron from the Root Cause Protocol standpoint here.