Would you give your older kids Covid antibody breast milk?

[Anonymous]

A few weeks from delivering and plan to breastfeed. Vaccination complete. I usually have an over-supply and have gone back and forth on giving my older (4 and 7) kids some of the breast milk in their morning smoothies. Would you do it?

[Anonymous]

No

[Anonymous]

This is crazy and there isn’t full science to back It up. Please don’t ask a grade school kid to start drinking your breast milk again.

[Anonymous]

No. Your kids are big and the amount of milk necessary to give them protection through breastmilk would be A LOT. With no guarantee that it would offer them protection, btw.

That stuff is like gold...I don't know about you, but I wasn't some high producing dairy cow.

[Anonymous]

Even with an oversupply, I wouldn’t do it. To make a difference, you would need to feed them more than just eight ounces a day. Every day for months.

And they don’t need the protection- kids are unlikely to get severely ill.

[Anonymous]

Only if they were young enough to still be nursing imminent tandem nursing. I extended nursed, placenta pilled, and cleared up my own pink eye via breast milk; but a breast milk immunity smoothie is a bit far for even me. Mostly because it seems like it would be difficult to adequately dose, but also it might be weird for older child. They would definitely need to know and be part of decision to partake.

[Anonymous]

Wow, why on earth would you do that?

[Anonymous]

No. Crazytunes.

[Anonymous]

OP, I'd do it unless it was taking away from the baby or making you crazy to have to pump extra. Not sure why people get so squeaked about breast milk. Y'all pp's need to relax.

[Anonymous]

No, because they’d need to be drinking it—a lot of it—constantly in order to reap the benefits of the antibodies.

[Anonymous]

Has anyone been able to find any studies or articles explaining HOW breastmilk helps? Are they absorbing antibodies into the blood stream? Or are antibodies only coating their throat/digestive tract? If they're being absorbed, why aren't there studies (that I can find anyway) taking blood samples and quantifying the immune response? If it's only coating the throat, is that enough to protect against a respiratory infection? And wouldn't it make more sense to "take a shot" of breastmilk periodically throughout the day to maintain the coating, than to just have a morning smoothie?

It's annoying that all of the articles I've read just makes blanket statements about "offering protection" but don't delve into any specifics, so people start extending nursing or feeding it to their older kids. I was always under the impression that after 6 months, babies didn't really absorb much of the antibodies passed through mother's milk because of their maturing digestive system.

[Anonymous]

Sure, why not. You’ll get a bunch of uptight weirdos who think being a mammal is a sin on here so I’m not sure why you posted.

[Anonymous]

I mean is there any downside? If not sure go ahead. I’m dubious it will help given the low volume but who knows.

[Anonymous]

I did, our older kid is immune compromised and I have oversupply so we put an extra ounce in her milk. Can’t hurt. I mean, it’s not any weirder than drinking a cows breast milk.

[Anonymous]

Yep, I'm doing it. DD is drinking milk from some source anyways.