Year 2017. Millions of years ago Homo Erectus and, by then, the offspring fed and survived because they fed, above all, on the mother's breast. Mortality was very high because the living conditions were what they were, and the dangers were obvious, but if a baby reached a child it was largely because he had food insured through his mother's milk.
This seems so obvious that, for many people, it does not make much sense in the present, because of the customs of the last decades, in which we were breastfed a few months and then we went to take a bottle to finally consume cow's milk.
This made many people consider this to be normal, and that it is believed that breast milk makes no sense beyond six months or, at best, twelve. Moment in which it is said that it is 'aguachirri' just when, really, provides more energy than cow's milk.
Water ... what?
Aguachirri, dirty water, milk that no longer feeds, or whatever you want to call it. There are thousands of women who in the pediatric or nursing office have received the advice of weaning because they are told that your milk is not what it was at the beginning. A few years ago this happened especially at six months. Now it seems that they are a bit more lax and have moved that speech at 12 months.
Not all, of course: there are professionals capable of understanding that if humanity has arrived until today it is thanks, in large part, to breastfeeding in children who walk and run, and who know that the evidence proves it: breast milk is good at any age.
In Babies and more Breastfeeding beyond six months: these are the short and long term benefits for the health of the baby and the mother"Stop giving tit and give real milk"
Another way to talk about breast milk in children over one year of age without knowing is this, which is in the mouth of many professionals and also in the mouth of ordinary people, those who do not wear white coats, who also they take the liberty of demonstrating their null knowledge in the field by saying that what a child has to drink is cow's milk, that is, "real milk"
That if the mother is informed (and the father too, which is a pillar of fundamental support), nothing happens, because look, "here I get in and out here"; The problem comes when they tell you with such conviction and vehemence, and even the professionals tell you, that you end up thinking that your child might be in need of cow's milk, yogurts and cheese, and it turns out that he is not receiving it in quantity for your conviction that you are doing your best.
Thus, many breastfeeding women often ask if you should start with yogurts before the year, if they would have to give cheese to the baby and if it would be better to take a breastfeeding to replace it with cow's milk.
'Aguachirri' has more calories than cow's milk
There are many differences between breast milk and cow's milk. One of them, the most obvious, is the one that should already be used to avoid such advice: human milk is specific to the human species, and therefore is more adapted for babies than cow's milk. But this is not all: human milk is specific to each baby, since milk varies among babies, and in the same baby it varies as it grows, and it also varies on a day-to-day basis. That is, that the milk produced by a mother is adapted to babies, is adapted to the age of her baby and is adapted to the time of day she breastfeeds her. Cow's milk, of course, has none of that.
In Babies and more Breastfeeding for longer, prolongs mother's sensitivity to her child up to ten years, according to a studyAnd there are more differences, of course. Not only does breast milk adapt nutritionally to the baby, it is also brings mother's defenses to the baby, which is not little. And it has, among other things, proteins that the human body recognizes without problems (cow's milk proteins produce allergy on multiple occasions), and it is digested superbly.
But today we focus on calories, to show that breast milk does not become 'aguachirri' and show that 'normal' is not to leave one to give the other. If it happens, let it be because the mother wants it to happen, not because she is convinced that the best thing for her child is to give her less tit and more cow's milk because, nutritionally speaking, it is not true.
Energy in cow's milk
We know that a liter of cow's milk provides 674.27 Kcal. If we transform this value to energy (kJ = kiloJoules) we have to contribute 2,821.14 kJ per liter
Energy in breast milk
In 2005, a study was published in which breast milk was analyzed beyond 12 months of breastfeeding, with the intention of responding to the doubt we explain today. The study was published in Pediatrics and in it the milk of mothers who were breastfeeding babies between 12 and 39 months was compared with the milk of mothers breastfeeding babies between 2 and 6 months.
They saw that the milk received by the smallest babies, younger than 6 months, contributed on average 3,103.7 kJ per liter, with variations of up to 863 kJ above and below (the milk of some mothers contributed about 2,300 kJ and that of others contributed about 3,900 kJ).
What was expected according to popular logic was that, when analyzing the milk of babies older than 12 months, they saw that the energy provided was less and less. That would be true that "if you want you can continue giving it, but it is already as if he were drinking water".
But no. What they saw was that the milk of these women (with children between 12 and 39 months) contributed to their children an average of 3,683.2 kJ per liter, with variations of up to 1,032 kJ both above and below (the milk of some mothers contributed about 2,700 kJ, while the milk of others came to provide 4,700 kJ per liter).
If we return this data to calories, we would be talking about cow's milk providing some 67 kCal per 100 ml, while the breast milk of children who are already walking contributes between 64.5 kCal and 112 kCal per 100 ml, being the average of 88 kCal / 100 ml.
And so?
Well, nothing, that everyone draw their own conclusions. If a mother breastfeeds her child above 12 months, she is the one who must decide how long to continue. She and her baby. And any nutritional advice about it should be done taking this into consideration, because breast milk is always better than cow's milk.
