Like a Mother by Angela Garbes

Author:Angela Garbes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-05-29T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Mother’s Milk

To produce breast milk, mothers melt their own body fat. Are you with me? We dissolve parts of ourselves, starting with gluteal-femoral fat, a.k.a. our butts and thighs, and turn it into food for our babies.

Breasts are complicated and fascinating organs. Out in the world, most of us hoist them up in bras, molding them into desired shapes under our clothing. At home, we let them hang out and rest, unencumbered. Some days they sit so buoyant, lovely, and proud, it’s hard not to admire them. Other days, they feel so sensitive that a breeze makes them tingle or ache with pain, and we wish we didn’t have to live with them at all.

Unlike our well-stocked ovaries and already beating hearts, or the living skin that envelops us at birth, breasts are not organs we’re born with. Rather, they’re something we acquire over time.

“You come into the world with a nipple and lots of potential: Some cells behind the nipple that, given the right hormonal stimulation, will grow and become a breast,” wrote Dr. Susan Love in 1990 in her now-classic women’s health tome, Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book.1

Breasts have only one functional purpose: to make food for our offspring. Amid the sexualized images of breasts that abound in our culture, it can be hard to remember this. But breasts exist for babies first—any adult enjoyment or appreciation is secondary. Breasts can only fulfill their true calling through pregnancy. If they’ve never produced milk, they simply haven’t reached full biological maturity (though they can still play a part in a happy and fulfilling life).

Of course, your breasts don’t care whether or not you actually want to have a baby, end up giving birth, or decide to breast-feed a baby. They simply follow your lead and, when called upon, do their best to meet expectations. Sometimes they are successful; sometimes they are not.

Mature breasts are composed of adipose tissue (a.k.a. fat); stroma, the beautifully named network of ligaments and connective tissue; clusters of milk-producing alveoli cells; and a series of ducts to transport milk. Hundreds of alveoli cells gather into grapelike bunches called lobules, and groups of these lobules come together to form a lobe. The average breast is made up of twelve to twenty lobes, which are spread throughout the breast like the petals of a flower.

Milk ducts act as plumbing, transporting milk from their respective lobes. These ducts meet up, and milk from various lobes mix together and continue traveling to the nipple, where the liquid can exit the body. (Upon lactating, many women, myself included, are surprised to discover that there is not just one hole in the nipple, but six or seven.)

During monthly menstrual cycles, estrogen and progesterone stimulate the growth of more milk ducts and alveoli cells. Woven amid all the lobes and stroma are also nerves, as well as lymph and blood vessels, all of which are affected by breast changes. The creation of new chambers and pathways rearrange the structure of each

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