Healthy Women Image

Vera Sizensky

Full Bio

The Amazing Reason Breast Milk Comes in Different Colors

The breast milk you produce is custom-made for your little one’s needs.

Your Health


Have you ever noticed how the color of your breast milk can vary? Arkansas mom Mallory Smothers noticed a difference from her pumped Friday morning breast milk versus the one from Thursday night (picture above) and shared it on Facebook. The reason her breast milk batches are different is pretty amazing, and it has the Internet pumped, with more than 70,000 shares.

You see, when a baby nurses, a vacuum is created in which the infant's saliva sneaks into the mom's nipple. If mammary gland receptors detect pathogens from the baby's spit via backwash, Mom's body will change the milk's immunological composition and produce customized antibodies.

That's why Smothers's latest batch of milk "resembles colostrum," or what many know as liquid gold—the form of milk moms make late in pregnancy and in the first few days of birth. It's filled with leukocytes and antibodies to protect newborns against disease.

"This comes after nursing the baby with a cold all night long. Pretty awesome, huh?! The human body never ceases to amaze me," Smothers writes.

Pretty incredible!

You might be interested in