Breast milk is an incredible, beautiful substance: a mother’s milk contains the hormones, cells, and antibodies a child needs to grow and ward off many diseases. That’s not to say that formula-fed children can’t or won’t grow up with all the necessary nutrients, of course.
Scientists know that breast milk is very much like a living thing: when a child feeds, the milk reacts and starts to produce what the child needs. For example, if a baby is sick, mom’s milk will respond in a way that provides the extra elements to make him or her better in no time. You can tell just by looking at breast milk color: sometimes it’s lighter, and sometimes it’s darker.
But you can imagine one mom’s surprise when she saw that her breast milk wasn’t a normal color: it had turned bright pink!
According CafeMom, an anonymous Australian woman explained in a closed breastfeeding group that she had grown concerned when her 16-month-old child refused to drink her breast milk.
The baby didn’t want to drink from her breast anymore and when mom pulled away, some of the milk that came out was fuchsia. When she squirted some out just to make sure, the color stayed consistent.
She was alarmed at first—quite understandably. But she quickly realized that she had eaten beets that day!
According to her post, that day, she had a juice that contained some fresh beets, ate a sandwich that was topped with beets and ended the day off with a can of beets.
She also realized that her urine had turned pink, and at this point she was confident that the color was not due to blood.
Doctors say that breast milk can change with diet, but in most, if not all cases, it’s still safe for the child to drink. It can anything from white to blue, green, pink, yellow, or even black. Yams, squash, pumpkins, and carrots are common color-changing culprits, too. Spinach can even cause a green tinge in a woman’s breast milk!
Breastmilk comes in a variety of colors. Colostrum may be clear, bright yellow, orange/pink, light brown or even dark…
Posted by Legendairy Milk on Wednesday, May 22, 2019
Of course, if you’re a breastfeeding mom and are very unsure of the cause of your breast milk’s color change, you can always talk to a doctor.
This is unbelievable! We’ve never seen anything like this, but we’re sure glad that we know about this phenomenon now. Please share with other moms you know!
