Where does milk come from?
Where does milk come from?
Women's milk is the greatest mystery of nature. This is a special liquid that is produced in the body of a woman after giving birth to the breasts. A baby receives in the first months of life a diet that most closely matches the nutritional needs of the child. In addition, the mother's milk contains hormones, immune defenses and useful microflora, designed to colonize the sterile niche of the newborn's intestines.
Structure of mammary glands
Breast milk is produced in paired dairyiron, which is a modified sweat gland. The human breastmilk has both women and men, but they differ only in the degree of their development, their structure is identical. In a mature woman, the breast has two spherical formations on the chest, in the center of which the areola is located - a pigmented, round region with a teat on top, to which all the gland ducts open. The body of the breast is surrounded by a thick layer of fat and consists of 15-20 separate lobes that are located around the nipple. Between the lobes of the breast the connective tissue is concentrated. In turn, each large proportion consists of a combination of large and small lobules, and the microscopic structure shows that the lobules consist of the type of lungs from the alveoli of 0.05-0.07 mm each. Formation of female lactation
The thoracic gland is hormone-dependent. Cyclic changes occur before pregnancy, but during pregnancy the most significant transformations take place. So, under the action of the hormones prolactin and estrogen are darker, the weight of the breast increases to 300-900 g (compared with the "pre-pregnant" weight of 150-200 g), its size becomes larger, in the lobules, the first milk gradually begins to separate and descend to the nipple - " colostrum". Colostrum during pregnancy is a white-yellow oily substance and is secreted in response to irritation in the nipple area. By the time of approaching the term of labor, the colostrum becomes more and more liquid and looks like milk, which everyone is used to seeing. In the first days after delivery, "transitional milk" is allocated. This milk is much thicker and more yellow than normal human breast milk. On the third or fifth day after delivery, the present "mature milk" comes. It is white or bluish-white with a sweetish smell and taste. Its fat content is about 4%. During one feeding, milk also changes: "front" - the milk that the baby sucks first, has a more liquid consistency and white color, then, almost in an empty breast, the child hardly sucks "back" - denser milk, with yellowish shade, saturated with fats. If the baby's milk gets drunk with the front milk, it gorges on the back. At the end of lactation, the mammary gland will decrease again, but will be larger than the original size.
