The fact that infants return to breastfeeding, breast milk, as the main food is a relatively recent fact that has caught science off guard. There are so many mistakes that were made a few decades ago in terms of advice and recommendations that now have been called myths, thanks to the investigations that appear.
Many professionals have already been trained or are being trained to prevent these myths from spreading and, from Babies and more, we are talking about them from time to time with the same purpose, make them disappear. One of these myths is the one that says that women should wash their nipples before each shot, which has a certain logic if we think that women who give artificial milk should maximize the hygiene of the bottle and the nipple, but that is not true.
Bottle and teat hygiene
As I said in your day, the utensils that a baby uses to eat should be cleaned well after each take and, sometimes, they should be sterilized. This is pure logic, because they are elements that come into contact with a food that after a few days is in poor condition and, just as we scrub the dishes and glasses we use, we must also clean the baby's pots.
The mother's nipples do not need to be washed before the shots
A few decades ago women received the indication of wash your chest after each shot. In hospitals, in fact, they washed their chest and then covered themselves with sterile gauze to prevent the skin from having germs, thus avoiding any contact between microorganisms and babies.
This measure, which some mother would find quite annoying, especially after a long time to do it (of those that after giving a bottle of artificial milk a mother said "and finally I can stop washing my nipples"), it ended up demonstrating unnecessary and even counterproductive.
Counterproductive?
In the areola of women there are some small, several lumps, which are called areolar glands or Montgomery glands (or Montgomery corpuscles), which are not there by chance, or by mistake, nor is it a simple visual feature of the woman's chest. They have a function, to secrete sebaceous substances whose purpose is protect and lubricate both areola and nipple.
The number of glands that each woman has is very variable, since there are women who can be counted 4 per areola and others who have up to 28, for example. When they are most seen it is during pregnancy and lactation, which is when their function is most important.
Well, if after each take a woman is dedicated to washing her nipples, the only thing she gets is to remove the protective layer created by the Montgomery glands, leaving the skin drier and unprotected. This increases the risk of women suffering cracks or wounds.
A daily and ready shower
The advisable thing, then, is that the cleaning of the breasts is the habitual one, that is to say, a daily shower and ready. In fact, in order not to dry them out a lot, it is advised not to abuse the soap, which would help remove the protective layer we have talked about.
I know that it may seem poor hygiene, I know that you will think that in the mother's skin there are sure to be hundreds and thousands of microorganisms and that it makes no sense to eliminate them in the plastic (from the bibles and teats) and leave them in the mother's chest. Well, it does make sense for a simple reason, those of the mother are quite known by the baby, while those of the utensils are not so much.
If you look, now when a child is born the first thing they do is leave it in the mother's chest. The main reason is that there is more warm and comfortable than anywhere else. Then there are other reasons, such as the link that is created between the two, that makes the first shot, etc., being one of them, too, that it is contaminated with the mother's microorganisms (and not those of the parrots), precisely because they are the ones who already know their time inside the uterus.
The microorganisms of a bottle, on the other hand, are external, they appear coming from the outside and from the remains of artificial milk that remain in the walls and in the teats, a liquid that is not sterile and that also increases in number of germs in a way exponentially (that's why cow's milk should be consumed two days after being opened and that's why it should be kept in the fridge).
Breast milk is also contaminated, of course, but a breast can not be washed inside as a bottle, but only outside, where it also makes no sense because of the comments: It already has its own protective and lubricated system and with a daily shower is more than enough.
Photos | Raphael Goetter, Daquella Way on Flickr On Babies and more | Everything you need to know to have a happy breastfeeding, The ten most controversial parenting practices: prolonged breastfeeding, Keys to successful breastfeeding
