![]() ![]() ![]() “We are actively working on that right now in the lab,” he says. Researchers don’t know, however, how robust the immunity is or how long it will last. “Basically breast milk likely provides a kind of hazard protection,” says Joseph Larkin III, a senior author of the study. Read More: I Was Nervous About Getting the COVID-19 Vaccine While Pregnant. (The antibodies also remained in breast milk that was frozen and stored rather than fed to the child immediately.) The team took blood and breast-milk samples from 21 new mothers before and after they received the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines and found that, after vaccination, there was a 100-fold increase of immunoglobulin A antibodies, one of the many defenses the body needs to mount against the virus. In late August, The Journal of Breastfeeding Medicine did publish a small study conducted by researchers at the University of Florida. While preliminary data from studies indicating that breast milk might contain antibodies have been trickling out all summer, few have been published because the vaccine hasn’t been around for that long and the peer-review process for such studies takes time. (Before August, the CDC had said pregnant women were eligible to get the vaccine but had not outright recommended it, instead urging them to speak directly with their health care providers.) That prospect is particularly compelling to women who did not get vaccinated until after they gave birth, either because the vaccine was not available when they were pregnant or because the CDC had not yet officially recommended that pregnant people get the vaccine, but it also appeals to those who did get the vaccine while pregnant and hope breastfeeding will boost any immunity. Kids under 12 are not yet eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, so many moms want to do whatever they can to offer some level of protection. The pandemic has added another layer of stress for new mothers. So Why Do So Many Moms Feel So Bad About Themselves? Read More: Motherhood Is Hard to Get Wrong. (Many doctors have adopted a “fed is best” philosophy as a counter to that pressure.) As TIME explained in a 2017 cover story, the image of a mother who happily sacrifices her well-being and time spent on her career to breastfeed is part of the “goddess myth” of motherhood that places unrealistic expectations on new mothers and causes feelings of inadequacy among parents. The “breast is best” movement has long touted the health benefits of breastfeeding but also created anxiety for new mothers who struggle physically, mentally or emotionally with the sometimes painful and always time-consuming task of breastfeeding. Pressure on women to breastfeed isn’t new. “And there was so little information out there about breast milk and antibodies, but I was like, ‘If I don’t and my baby caught COVID, I would feel like it’s my fault.’” After four months, she finally decided she was useless to her family if she could barely move and switched her baby to a full formula diet. “It cost a lot of money and a lot of heartache because it’s something you’re ‘supposed to do’ for your child,” she says. After he was born, the 34-year-old stay-at-home mother had tracked down a study that indicated she might be able to pass antibodies to her newborn through her breast milk, so even though she had gotten vaccinated while pregnant, which research suggests may offer some protection to the baby, she forced herself to continue to pump as an additional precaution. hadn’t even eaten outdoors at a restaurant and had chosen an out-of-the-way pediatrician in a less crowded neighborhood so that she would encounter fewer people every time she took her son to the doctor. Since getting pregnant, she had barely left her neighborhood near Richmond, Va. Pfaffroth was desperate to find any way she could to minimize her chances of getting sick. “Instead what I did was meet with a lactation specialist once a week, took a bunch of supplements and did everything single woo-woo thing that I could find that had even a tiny bit of science behind it.” “Had COVID not been a thing, as soon as I found out that my body just couldn’t make enough milk, I probably would have gone straight to formula feeding,” she says.
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