Transcript:
Sources:
Gland of Montgomery – an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
Anatomy, Thorax, Mammary Gland – StatPearls – NCBI Bookshelf (nih.gov)
Montgomery glands | Radiology Reference Article | Radiopaedia.org
William Fetherstone Montgomery – Wikipedia
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Milk Minute podcast. Heather, how are you doing? Oh, I’m so glad you asked. I just love talking about myself. Everyone at my house is throwing up and having diarrhea except me and then Heidi woke up with hand, foot, and mouth.
So, she could not go, she could not go to her field trip today at school where they were going to go to Wamsley Cycles. What? Also, wait, they’re going to a bike store for their field trip? Yeah, I mean, they’re four, so I guess anything’s exciting. Okay, okay, whatever. Nothing against Womsley’s, like, love it, but.
No, no, it’s a great bike store. I’m just like, maybe not where I’d go for a field trip. It’s fine. Ha ha. Be like a five second long field trip. Here’s the bikes. Okay, everybody go home. Ha ha. Can we ride them? No, you’re too small. Okay. I’ll say no. Also, no. In fact, don’t touch anything. But anyway, so she is excited to stay home, but I had to work a little bit today and my husband is still reeling from being completely emptied of all fluids.
And I was like, you got this, right? You can handle this for a few hours. You’re good. You’re good, right? Can you also sanitize the entire small bathroom again? Everything. Everything. And everything you’ve touched. And he’s like, Ugh. Oh my god. Yeah. Wear a mask when you walk into the house. And just like spray Lysol in front of you.
Like a big X. Honestly. Yeah, I’m like fricken seven months pregnant. And I do not want to vomit to the point where my pelvic floor falls out. Again. No. No. Absolutely not. That’s horrendous. Yeah. It’s my, it’s my fear that I’m going to end up with this and I’m going to vomit so hard something falls out.
Sleep at the office. I’ve thought about it, actually, might not be a bad idea. At this point in pregnancy, if you had like severe norovirus or something, you would probably just pop a bunch of new hemorrhoids out and bust up your pelvic floor and it would be fucking terrible. I would hate that for you.
Thank you. I mean, I already had norovirus at the beginning of this pregnancy. I don’t want to bookend it. You know, I just think that would be ridiculous. No, thanks, especially because I just had my ultrasound yesterday, which my husband could not make it to because he was barfing. So I took Heidi and she was super cute and she loved it, had a million questions for the ultrasound tech, but the baby actually showed their face, which never happens.
My kids are always hiding in the placenta. So it was really. Cool to see that. And ultrasounds have come a long way, even in four and a half years. Mm hmm. Absolutely. I was like, wait, do I have to pay extra for this? Like, oh, this is just what it looks like now? Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah. They’re still a little bit creepy though, but like getting less creepy with the 4D renderings, you know?
Oh my gosh, yeah. And honestly, they’re pretty chubby in there. Like, it doesn’t look like an alien. It’s like a chubby. Yeah, it’s not like those 20 week scans where you’re like, is that… Skeletor! It’s a little, it’s different. Yeah, ooh, it’s mine, look how cute. Yeah, so anyway, I’m just, I’m hanging in there.
But what are you doing? What are you up to? I was doing some home visits this morning for Amish women, which is always just… And that’s just kind of like an entertaining day for me because I just, I don’t, I don’t know what, what’s going to happen at any of those. Like they never give me advance warning about anything.
They’re like, I’ll just wait until I see you next. Even if my leg is falling off. It’s fine. Yeah. Also, like, sometimes I show up and there’s, like, eight children in a cart being, like, pulled by a pony in the front yard, and that’s wonderful, you know? There was, like, a 11 year old girl skinning a deer in the front yard, and you’re like, oh.
You just never know. I did get to meet the tiniest horse I’ve ever seen today, though. Like, they got, this one family got a new cart pony, and she had a baby, and it was like, it was like a toy. I was like, oh, that’s not a real horse. It was so small. Was it meant to be tiny? Yeah, well, it’s a baby and they’re like this little, like the full grown pony was maybe like up to my chest.
Okay. And they’re just for pulling carts, you know? And yeah, so the baby is like, like so tiny. Aw, that’s so cute. I’d love to see that. I love horses. Did you know that about me? I don’t know that I did know that. Are you a horse girl? Did you, like, want to be a horse girl? Cause I did, but I just didn’t, like, have a horse, so.
It’s expensive to be a horse girl. It is. It is. So no, I’m not one. But if someone’s like, Hey Heather, would you like to come pet my horse? I’m gonna be like, hell yeah! I do want to pet your horse, and I’m one of those people that when I pet it, I truly think we’re connecting, you know? The horse is probably really creeped out by me, but I’m like, oh, I’m really feeling our spirits align right now.
Well, next time you come to my house, the horses in the field on the left are very friendly. You’re allowed to pet them. They’re very nice. All right. Well, I’ll go imprint on them next time I’m up, which is going to be soon. You have a spiritual connection with them. It’ll be great. They’re the only ones I connect with.
Okay. All right. Well, what are we talking about today? So today, we’re going to chat about those, like, bumps on your areola, right? Where people call me and they’re like, Oh yeah, I’ve had these bumps and I popped one and something came out and I don’t know. They keep coming back and we’re like, please don’t pop them.
And I’m like, I get it. I’m a picker too. I totally want to. We’re talking about Montgomery glands. Awesome. Yeah, we definitely need to talk about this because most people don’t really know, like, what, what constitutes a nipple? Is this an areola? What are these bumps? Is milk going to come out of them? If the white stuff comes out of them, is it milk?
Question mark. Honestly, I, I learned a lot looking into this too. You know, I was, I’ve read some studies that I just would have never thought existed. Oh. I can’t wait. Awesome. Well, before we get into that, let’s thank a couple patrons. Big shout out to Sarah Kelly, Les Sierra, and Lauren Godwin. And Lauren’s actually my neighbor, so thank you, Lauren.
I appreciate it. And I love seeing her and her baby walk in their very fancy stroller. She’s got one of those, I think it’s a Vista, and it’s like the bassinet one where the baby lays down, like a traditional pram, and the other day I saw it and I was like, oh, that is a fine looking stroller, and I looked it up and I was like, I think I could afford a horse before I could afford a Vista.
I know there’s like 1, 300 strollers. You’re like, wow, are we buying a car or a stroller? Oh, it’s more than that. It is. Yeah. And I looked at my husband and I was like, guess what? You’re buying me. It’s my push present. Then I could Anyway, we love you guys. Thank you so much. Yes, absolutely. Well, let’s take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors and then we’ll talk about nipple bumps.
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Welcome back everybody. Before we talk about Montgomery glands, let’s answer a quick question from a listener. We actually received this email yesterday from Cassandra M. And Cassandra was listening to the Should I Stop Breastfeeding episode, and she had a follow up question, which I thought was really good.
Okay, Cassandra says, The question that has me experiencing the most guilt regarding potentially weaning is surrounding the benefits breastfeeding confers to the recipient, and therefore what I may be robbing him of if we wean. Is there a minimum effective dose for breast milk, so to speak? I’ve hesitated to drop feedings because I want him to have the immune and general health benefits and worry that he may not get those if he’s not getting a certain threshold amount of breast milk.
Per day if there is such a thing. I value your evidence-based approach and figured if there is info on this topic, you would know about it. Thank you. And she also tried looking this up on PubMed and no surprise, she’s a pharmacist. . I love that. Oh man. I have to preface any answer with studies about the benefits of breastfeeding.
are very, very hard to control because we have different populations who breastfeed or don’t and that is strongly correlated with things like socioeconomic status and, you know, nutritional status and other things that are going to affect lifelong health of your child. Right? And so it’s really hard to like eliminate all of those factors and be like, it was a only breastfeeding that did this, but we also do have some information that basically tells us any amount of breastfeeding, whether, you know, we, we call this like the ever breastfed in the studies like never breastfed exclusively breastfed and ever breastfed.
And that category consistently shows marked increases in these health factors that we’re looking at as far as breastfeeding benefits. Yeah, and also I have had several patients who can’t breastfeed exclusively or don’t want to breastfeed exclusively, but they do still latch a couple times a day. So maybe before naps or morning, evening, whenever it’s nice for them.
So they eliminate the feedings that are triggering them or too stressful or whatever. And they only keep the feeding or the feedings. That are serving them. And you know, the risk of this obviously is that you dry up completely or your baby doesn’t tolerate it. But that’s on your baby. And frankly, what we see from older baby research and milk composition is that the smaller the volume in a 24 hour period, the greater the concentration of the good stuff in it.
So baby is typically getting the same amount of antibodies in four ounces as they are Spread over 24 ounces. So for a lot of these things, it is not necessarily volume dependent. It’s dose dependent for that day, almost like instead of getting all of your vitamins over the course of three square meals, you’re taking one giant wheatgrass shot in the morning.
And there you go. Additionally, so to not think about it as A vitamin or like a medication. Think about it as like palate development or the reversal of some of the other oral effects that may be like pacifiers or thumb sucking has. So we have seen a lot of research that shows us that any amount of breastfeeding.
Where they actually expand the, their palate to accommodate the nipple will counteract any narrowing of the palate that is done by a thumb or a pacifier. So, I mean, benefits abound regardless of dose and as long as it’s serving you. So I hope that answers your question. Absolutely. And, you know, I generally really try to encourage people, you know, if, if they want to keep breastfeeding for the benefits, like you said, only continue the parts that are actually serving you.
And also that if you need to wean entirely, that’s okay. You have already conferred lots of benefits to your baby. There’s no way that we can quantify that and nor should we try, you know, because that’s real stressful. It’s not going to be accurate and it doesn’t matter because you’ve done amazing stuff already and we can acknowledge that as a generalization, I think, and still be really proud of that.
Yep, agreed. We’re all just out there doing our best, you know. All right. Well, I, I hope that answers your question. I know that wasn’t like, probably not the answer you were hoping for. Well, the pharmacist is like, tell me, please, dear God. She’s like, what’s the dosage? She’s like, please tell me it’s two ounces a day.
You know, if you tell me two ounces a day, I will muscle through and I will do what I need to do to make two ounces or find two ounces a day. I wish that I could give you that data. I would say half an ounce, half an ounce a day. If you can, and it’s not too much for you, half an ounce would be better than nothing.
Yeah, absolutely. And also, like, if you need to wean, this is me and Heather telling you right now that you can do that. Yep, four thumbs up. Yes.
Okay. Well, let’s, let’s get to the episode. This is going to be kind of fun. You know, it’s kind of fun. Yeah, tell me about my nipples. Okay. So if you don’t already know what we’re talking about, when you look at your breast, Your areola is the flat part around your nipple that has a different pigmentation than the rest of your breast.
It’s typically going to be darker. And on that, you know, circle of skin, we typically have little bumps that sometimes look like zits, right? Sometimes they have a little whitehead, sometimes they’re really small, sometimes they get a little bigger. And those are what we’re talking about today. These are called Montgomery glands or tubercles, and I say both because they’re different parts of the anatomy, but it’s really the same thing when we’re just talking generally, right?
So the Montgomery gland is the part that exists under the skin. And the Montgomery tubercle is like the pore that the little bump that we see on the top of the skin. Now, usually when people ask us about this, it’s in pregnancy because the tubercles become larger and more noticeable in pregnancy.
Sometimes they’re like significantly swollen. Sometimes they come to like a little head and you can see that there’s fluid inside of them, right? And any given person might have 4 to 25 of them per areola. That’s a big range. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Let me tell you what I see the most. Okay. So, I see that when people have an even number, they don’t think about it at all.
Mostly, unless you have one tubercle that is, like, really aggressive. I mean, like, visually, they look symmetrical. Yeah, yeah. Then there’s people that have, like, four on one side and 25 on the other. And they are like, okay, what is this? What’s happening? What’s wrong with breast A or breast B? And I’m like, literally nothing.
But can I tell you about an interesting nipple I saw the other day? I would love to hear about it. You like, you never have to ask that. You just tell me. And nothing was wrong with this nipple, but it kind of, I would like to think about this nipple as you’re teaching me more about Montgomery glands today.
Every single one of her tubercles was at the base of her nipple. Ha! Like a little necklace for the nipple. Like, exactly. Ha! Like a little necklace. But it was, they were right on top of each other, like clustered right on top of each other. So, this poor girl had been trying to measure her flange size. And she had been very confused about where her nipple started and ended because it was like nipple.
Not a, like a ridge of tubercles and then a flat areola with nothing. And I was like, I hear you. And you know what? This is a new one for me. I was like, first of all, they’re perfect. They’re fine. But I went with the size flange that did not rub them. Yeah, I think that would probably become irritating. And if they calm down a little bit.
And they get a little smaller, you can size down, you know. That’s what I figured. So, in case you’re out there listening, you can always phone a friend and we can work it out together. Yeah, and, and, you know, Heather and I think both have seen cases of, like, severely swollen Montgomery glands before and all, all kinds of issues with them.
So, if, if you’ve had a problem with yours, you’re not alone. Yes. Okay, sorry to interrupt. Go ahead. It’s okay. I’m fine with it. Let’s talk a little bit about more about like, anatomically, what is happening? Because I love that. Okay, tell me. Okay, so these are what we would think of as like a modified sebaceous and lactiferous unit.
Okay, so sebaceous is a word that we use when we’re talking about places in the body that hold like oil or fat. And lactiferous refers to something that either makes or conveys like a milky fluid. Not necessarily milk, though. Don’t know why. And so, so that’s what the anatomy textbooks say about them.
And they secrete. Wait, so is that, is that like if one of my face pores had a love child with one of my glands in my vagina that lubricates? Kind of. Or maybe like one of your, like, nipple pores almost, you know? It’s like something in between there. And it, it secretes an oily fluid, which like helps the nipple stay moist and supple.
It prevents cracking, it prevents the nipple and the areola from drying out. And typically we don’t notice this fluid coming out. It’s like very, very small amounts of lubrication, just. throughout the day. And this is the reason that most of the time, like health care providers don’t tell you have to wash your nipples with soap because we already have this like self-cleaning system in there, which is kind of cool.
Very cool. And thank God, one less thing to worry about with nipples and breasts. Exactly. And this secretion from the Montgomery glands. Also contains antimicrobial factors that prevent the growth of germs, which is so cool. Yeah, so actually they recommend not washing your nipples with soap. Just the same reason why we don’t take a bar of dial soap and wash the inside of our vagina.
Yes. Because that, that’ll mess you right up. Also, who did that as a kid, like, one time? Yeah, it was really not fun. Or how about every single time you go to a hotel and you forget to pack your fancy soap and you’re like, I don’t know. Like, I’m pretty sweaty from whatever we were doing. I’ll just put a little of the hotel soap around the outside and then you’re like, no.
And then you’re like, that was a Bernie mistake that I’m gonna pay for. Instant yeast.
Anyway, so, this antimicrobial oil helps protect your breastfeeding baby, which is amazing. But we also have Like larger theories about the Montgomery glands that I’m going to get into a little bit later in a second. Also wanted to note that everybody has these every human doesn’t matter what your sex is, whether you’ve breastfed or not.
These are just there just like the mammary glands, just like the nipple. It’s all there friends. Question lactating.
Male friends, do they, they also secrete the oily substance that moisturizes their nipples? Yes. I don’t know. And do we care? I was just wondering. I also don’t care. I would, I would kind of guess, maybe not, because we have like, none of the hormones that are involved in maturing and activating all of the glands on the breast, you know?
It’s still kind of like an awkward mucus membrane though. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it definitely is. I don’t know. You know, because they also like they will never have a hormonal period, like, or most, most, most men will not have a hormonal period where they’re like maturing and stimulating the Montgomery glands like we do in pregnancy.
So, no? Question mark? That’s a good question. It’s almost like your tubercles.
Interesting. Interesting thoughts that we’re having today that have no bearing on our lives whatsoever. Perfect. And we always come back to this. Who cares about men? No one. I’m kidding. I’m kidding. Hey, hey, they’re, they’re Ken enough. They’re Ken enough, right? They’re Ken enough. Did you get to see the Barbie movie yet?
No, not yet. My life is not working out. It’s not working out for me. Just take, just leave work and go see the Barbie movie, okay? Okay. So the ducts, the tubercles and the glands and everything, they’re really similar to what we have going on like in our mammary glands, right? The, they’re similar to the ducts that carry milk to the nipple.
And we get occasional reports that they do carry milk. It’s not the norm, it’s not what they’re supposed to do, but we have reports as high as 20% of people reporting that milk occasionally comes out of them. I don’t know how true that is, but like there have been case reports where, you know, doctors looked at it and they’re like, oh, yeah, that’s definitely milk coming out of them.
It’s not in great amounts. It’s not like it’s leaking out of them all the time, but essentially sometimes those ducts, like instead of ending in a little sebaceous gland, they like do do do do do and connect back to the larger mammary system.
What’s that duck thinking? It’s growing. It’s lost. That duct is lost. Where
am I thought I would add, too, that these are named after William Featherstone Montgomery. You know, because why not? Let’s name it after a man. He was an Irish obstetrician who first described them in his book that he published in 1837 called An Exposition of the Signs and Symptoms of Pregnancy. And I tried to find out more information on him to see if he was like…
Steeped in controversy, but it seems like he was actually pretty boring. Yeah. He sounds like a guy I would like to be with. He, he, you know he was like a professor of midwifery, which it said, which I thought was interesting. Don’t know how accurate that is, Wikipedia. I mean, obstetricians were like new on the scene, right?
Yeah, they were pretty new on the scene. He had a number of papers and studies focused on the breasts. And in particular changes of the nipple and areola. So that’s pretty cool. And he died of a heart attack. So sorry. I don’t know why that’s funny to me. I just, I’m. Haha. No, I’m just kind of thinking about how, you know, men back in the 1700s would like stick a flag in something that has existed for millions of years and they’re like, I discovered it.
And then William Featherstone Montgomery is like, I am the first to discover Montgomery Glans. I shall write it down and draw a photo. And draw a picture because photos didn’t exist. It’s just really, and all the girls rolled their eyes and they’re like, yeah, we’ve known this forever. Well, I just thought to mention if any listeners are related to William Featherstone Montgomery, like, send us an email, let us know, you know.
Yeah, and send us a portrait because I want to see if he’s hot because that’s a good hot name. I did not find a picture of him. I didn’t look that hard for one though. I was mostly trying to look if he like, did any weird crazy stuff that we could talk about. Oh, he did. It’s just not on record. It’s just not there.
Well. On that note, we should take like a really quick break and then we’re gonna dig a lot deeper into the larger functions of the Montgomery glands and the role that they play in initiating breastfeeding. Sounds good.
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Welcome back everybody. Alright Maureen, tell me about the bigger picture of Montgomery glands and how they get us going with breastfeeding. Okay, okay. So I dug around in a lot of different studies trying to find one that I felt like gave us really good information and information that would be interesting for this podcast.
And one that I found that I’m going to really focus on was from 2009 and it was called the secretion of areolar glands from lactating women, selective unconditioned responses in neonates. What an exciting title. Do you love when they just title the study, like just, it’s like the first sentence.
They’re like, that’s the title. Yeah, they’re like the original SEO friendly thinking. It was very SEO friendly. I did find this. Yeah, I think they’re gonna, they’re gonna get flagged for keyword stuffing. I could tell you all about that. Okay, but the actual aim of this study was to determine if the Montgomery glands had like a communicative function for the newborn, like if it was sending them a message, which is really cool.
Also I seemed like kind of a challenge to study. So I’ve, I’ve read this thing like five times. It was great, actually riveting research. And I kind of wonder, you know, who was the genius that was like, let’s study this. Yeah, well, so we have had like several decades of research where it’s been like shown that the compound, you know, secreted by the Montgomery gland has volatile components, like things that we notice with our sense of smell and humans respond to.
And it’s been noted a bunch of times that it probably affects newborn behavior. But it wasn’t really studied in isolation, you know? So we had some studies saying breast odor reduced arousal states for active newborns, but increased arousal states for sleepy babies it elicited head turning, stimulated oral activity, you know, things like that, which is so great.
And it leads to the hypothesis that this helps initiate breastfeeding, right? But a lot of that research looked at both colostrum and Montgomery secretions and milk, like kind of all mixed together kind of nonspecifically, you know or it’d be like one line in a bigger study. So these folks were like, let’s just study the Montgomery secretions.
Love that. Love that. What they do, like. Pop some tubercles and put it on a Q tip and try to entice a sort of blind newborn with it and be like, over here. Yes, basically yes. They had three day old neonates. And they took secretions from lactating women who the babies had never met before. So not their mothers, no one they were related to, strangers.
And they looked at the effect of those secretions on the infant behavior and on the autonomic nervous system as compared to some other interesting odors. So, their arbitrarily chosen artificial odorants were really, I was like, what the fuck are those? So they included like, Some, okay, this one I couldn’t quite figure out what it was, this was just like mystery oily secretion from lactating females, but they didn’t say what that was.
But they also looked at human milk, cow milk, breast milk replacement, so like a formula, they used vanillin, and What’s vanillin? It’s like vanilla extract. Oh, why? I mean, is that because it’s an extract from a beaver gland? I, I don’t know. I think they were just trying to see like, okay, you know, we’ve got things that we know affect babies like milk.
You know, we have milk replacements. Let’s just do another food. Smell to see if it’s like all foods, right? Makes sense. Or just like a really non-threatening smell that… Yeah, and they used water too as the control, you know. And they, they got some really impressive results actually. So, of course, they saw that the smell of the Montgomery secretions intensified the baby’s head and mouth movements, both in how many they made and how long they made them.
It increased how, like, largely they inhaled, like it make, made them take really big, deep breaths. And they, the responses developed independently from any experience with the breast or milk. So babies that were both breastfed and not breastfed. Ah, so they’re naturally just inclined to smell something coming out of your gland, take a deep breath so they can smell it more and confirm.
And then go for it. Yeah, it’s, it’s really cool. So, you know, the conclusion of this is that because this, the smell of the Montgomery secretions is arousing, it helps baby align their head to the breast for feeding, and it essentially initiates the chain of behavioral and physiological events that establish lactation.
And, you know, these secretions are, are like chemical signals from the breast. Right? And they activate the oral activity on the nipple, which in turn starts this whole cascade of stuff that happens to get us to lactogenesis too. Is it a one way street or does it also take in the baby’s saliva and then, you know, support lactation that way?
I didn’t see.
Yeah, we have dabbled in this. I’ve seen this in lactation before, where the glands actually take a reading of your baby’s saliva and transmit that the other way to our body. I would actually, I want to do an episode on this, on the salivary reuptake. Because I did recently, you know, cause somebody asked me one question about it.
I sat and read about it for like nine hours.
Cause that’s just what happens in my every day. Yeah, let’s do a whole episode on that. Cause it was really interesting. Yeah, I think that is really cool and, and how you would, I mean, those studies would have to be much more complicated than this, but this is like pretty definitive. This is actually set up really well.
It is. I think they had really good controls. They had a really good process. And one interesting thing too that they mentioned is that the breast odors stimulated eye opening for the infant, which then in turn helps establish bonding. For the mother, and that’s like a reinforcing stimulus that positively affects the parental responsiveness.
Which is, it’s just like a really cool way to look at that. Well, and also, you know, this whole like skin to skin movement. Thank God that we’re that we’re doing again. They’re like, oh, it’s the skin to skin and it’s like it’s not just the skin to skin It’s the fact that your baby is on your skin and very close to your glands which are taking Readings potentially and submitting chemical neurotransmitters and then also have you seen that whole I forget who wrote it I’m gonna have to if I find it, I’ll put it in the show notes But there’s a midwife out there who is like very anti newborn hats Have you seen this?
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And I, I was like, okay, I’ll bite, and I read it the other day, and it made so much sense to me. I’m, I’m very anti newborn acts as well. I mean, I just never really thought about it before. She was like, it is so stupid to put a hat on a newborn. First of all, it doesn’t stay on. Second of all, you will, you will get a response from the mom.
So, like, the same way this study is set up to see what… responses are elicited in the newborn, we get responses from mom when the head isn’t covered. We, we see the mom smell the, the wet head and, you know, really kind of like begin that bonding process. I’ve literally seen mothers like lick their baby’s heads.
It’s just totally unconsciously, you know, and I will never be like, why did you just lick your baby? Because it makes so much sense that every other mammal is going to do that. Yep. Yeah. And so meanwhile, here in America, we’re like, shove a hat on that. Let’s cover up the conehead and then you have to fuss with the hat endlessly because it won’t stay on.
Yeah, and I definitely understand, like, keeping heat in for the neonate, especially, like, smaller babies, compromised babies, but… No, this was ruled out. Yeah, exactly. I don’t know if you saw that, but apparently that whole thinking that, that newborns lose the majority of their heat out of their head is not necessarily true because that’s based on a study of military guys that were in the trenches and in the middle of winter and they measured the heat output.
Of course it was coming out of their head. Everywhere else was covered with wool and their uniforms and they weren’t wearing hats. So it’s like, that’s where it’s going to escape. Yeah, we have much more effective ways of protecting newborn temperature, one of which just being skin to skin. And I think it’s interesting, you know, in the conclusion of this study, they, they talked about, you know, how this, this really essentially plays a key role in infant survival.
If we’re looking at a species, which is really interesting to think about. And when we think about it that way. It also has implications for non-breastfed infants, like infants you are planning to formula feed from the beginning may also benefit from being close to the breast, smelling alveolar secretions, because it’s going to increase their feeding activity, whether that’s at the breast or bottle.
Can we also, so, you know, we need to put this on our list of PhD topics that we’re trying to… Send out to the universe, but we should study this in NICU babies. I was just thinking that I was like What if we had little q tips of Montgomery Glen oils? Yeah prior to feedings bottle or otherwise and also Like, not.
Yeah, I mean, especially for those infants who are just stuck on feeding tubes because we cannot get them to suck. Mm hmm. Yeah. I think this would be a good one and easy to study because NICU babies are much easier to study. They’re In one place. They’re already isolated. And very controlled. And very monitored.
I know. I, I 100% agree. I guess one of us will have to get a fucking Ph. D. sometime. Oh, I’m gonna go ahead and say not it right now. I’m, I’m at capacity. So. Not, not right now. Neither of us, until our kids are older, and then maybe we’ll do it together. Yeah, that would be a really cool tool for speech language pathologists and OTs that work in the NICU to do.
We should reach out to our buddies that we interviewed, and see if they have any current research projects that they would… Like to work on. That’s a great idea, because I would like someone to do this. Hey, can I give you some more work? Anyway, like, you know, I, I know that this episode probably isn’t going to change anybody’s breastfeeding success and isn’t going to solve problems for you, but I do think it’s really interesting to understand what our bodies are doing and to know this going into your birth, right?
And to know that, yes, your baby is benefiting just from being near the breast, even if they have never latched yet. Mm hmm. And if you want to hear about my Montgomery glands and tubercles, you can hop over to our subscription only podcast called beyond the boob. That’s tracking my pregnancy. We’ve talked about we have talked about them and you know, I may or may not have pulled a little stalactite of oil out of one of the glands this morning with some tweezers.
It was just Dangling there, like a blackhead that was halfway out. I had to get it. It would have just come off on its own. But then I wouldn’t have received the joy. The dopamine, the little dopamine hit of the picking, I know. I understand that. However, if you put tweezers near your nipple again, you are on my shit list, girl.
Fine, but I had to get a spray tan for that wedding that I was in. And then the tan actually clung to some of the oily glands, so it actually looked like blackheads and I knew it wasn’t. Did you were No, I guess I should. Don’t they give you pasties for that? No. I just stood there butt ass naked and I was like, get it.
But, sorry. Shout out to Marley at the Glow Room. I’ve never spray tanned before, so I don’t know what that experience is like, but it sounds unpleasant. It’s pretty vulnerable. It’s right up there with a pap smear, but, okay. Wait, on that note, one more thing before we sign off. Nipple bomb. In general, so a lot of patients ask me about do I need to preemptively go ahead and start using nipple butter because everybody gets nipple butter in their baby shower presents.
There’s like you will have so much nipple butter you could drown in it and I don’t use it at all unless we have an injury. I agree. Because I don’t want to block the glands and I don’t want your baby to not be able to smell the smells. Yeah, I mean, I’m not like super worried about blocking the glands, you know, theoretically if they’re like continuously producing fluid It’s probably gonna get flushed out and it’s fine.
But more than that, it’s just like I don’t I don’t want your baby to be ingesting extra stuff that they don’t need to if we’re not needing to use it for like a medical reason, you know? Well, a lot of them though are occlusive barriers, like on purpose. So it depends on which one you’re using, but some of them like lanolin, it’s just Lanolin is intense.
It’s oil based, so like, oil attracts oil, and so it’s like, plus the smell, like, you can’t get through the smell of lanolin to smell anything in the whole room. I hate it so much. I, I know what it smells like. It smells like sheep, is what it smells like. 100% smells like sheep. I had a patient the other day that’s obsessed with bag balm, which is lanolin, and she was like, I love it.
I grew up on a farm. I put it on my lips every night, and I was like, oh my god. How’d you even? No, how’d you get pregnant? Like your husband kissed you know, so since I raise sheep, I do mostly have hair sheep, but I have a wool sheep because I’m just a glutton for punishment who I shear every year. And when, let me tell you what, when I’m done cutting this sheep’s wool, it is like goopy lanolin up to my elbows.
Ew! And like What? Just because their wool is saturated with it. It keeps them dry. Can I tell you, I did not know that that’s where lanolin came from. Yeah, it’s where lanolin comes from. And, like, since I’m basically, like, straddling this sheep to get her shorn, like, I have to be careful what pants I’m wearing because they’ll be ruined.
Because they’ll just be soaked through with oil. Whoa, that’s crazy. I don’t want that on my nipples, to be honest. And also, I mean, it’s actually great, though. Like, it is a really amazing natural barrier that we can use when we need to protect vulnerable skin. However, We don’t need to use that all the time.
It’s not prophylactic, though. Like, you know, start simple. Like, less is more. And then, also, if you feel chafed or if you have an injury, I want to know about it. I don’t want you just using lanolin till the cows come home or the sheep come home, and then you call me when your nipple’s about to fall off and I’m like, oh god.
You know what lanolin reminds me of, actually? You know that stuff, the like medicated ointment barrier that we use for bed sores? It is like that exact texture. Bag bomb. Yeah. It smells the same too. That’s probably what’s in it. Yeah, I don’t, yeah, I really, I don’t know if there’s lanolin in it or not, but I know there’s a bunch of different things to use, but it’s what I think of every time I touch, like, a tube of lanolin.
How do they get the lanolin off the sheep and into the jar? I, I know, if they’re, it’s not, I mean, I couldn’t, I can imagine it’s not hard to harvest from wool. Like, you’re just rendering fat, so you just, like, boil it and it floats to the top. But I don’t know if that’s how we actually get it or not. Oh my gosh, I smell a project.
You want me to render some lanolin? Yeah, next time you shear your sheep. I’ve got like boxes of wool in my attic. You can do it anytime you want. I’m not doing it. You do it. I just said, I don’t have time. Yeah, I love that you think I do. Okay, anyway. I don’t. I don’t. Now that we’ve gotten a tangent about sheep husbandry.
Yeah, whenever you and I finally lose our minds and we need to run away from life, we’ll spend a whole day like wearing farm skirts and just freaking extracting lanolin from your sheep. Sounds good. Yeah, all kinds of stuff. Sounds wonderful. All right. Perfect. Well, thank you for all of that. So just to summarize, don’t pick at your Montgomery glance.
Don’t try to pop them. If you do have one that is super enlarged and it gets painful, and you have been picking it especially, you are at risk to have an infected gland, just like any other gland in your body that can get infected, and you can go get some treatment for that. Please don’t try to lance that yourself at home.
This is not a cystic acne situation. This is a gland that can be damaged. And then also, please don’t preemptively use nipple butter. If you have an injury or you feel chafed, call Lactation Consultant and then use it, but use it under guidance. Did I cover everything? I, I think you did. I think we’re ready to move on.
Let’s move on.
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Enjoy!
We have an award! Boop boop! Let’s do it. Alright, so, we got a wonderful email and we’d love to give a shout out and an award to that person. So… This email is from Casey. Casey says, Hi, I’m listening to the podcast as I pump. And I thought I’d update you. Our baby Jane did end up getting a G tube. And after two months, we’re home, it will take some time for her vocal cords to heal.
And she has a great suck on a pacifier. And we’ve been doing passy dips while she gets her tube feeding to associate the sucking with the taste of milk and her belly getting full. We worked with a lot of great people, and they’ve helped us Let’s get home and this is our first step to breastfeeding. We are trying to work with different pacifiers now, but she has definitely developed a preference for the Suvi.
I’m learning to love my pump, kind of, and realizing that pumping is still breastfeeding and that’s okay. And she sent us a picture of her adorable, happy two month old. Oh, yeah, she’s the one that we answered her, her complicated question the other day, just a couple episodes ago, so I love that she sent us an update and we could get some closure on that.
And that is so great that you’re using the PASI dips. This ties right into what we were saying. Rub some Q tips on your Montgomery glands and see if you can elicit a response prior to a G tube feed and see what happens. Oh the perfect one for this episode. It is, it is. Okay, let’s see, what award should we give her?
All right, Casey, we’re going to give you the Prodigious Pumper Award, because not only are you pumping at this point, but you really overcame a lot of those feeding challenges that are very complicated, and you stuck with it, and you’re doing a great job, and you’re still sticking with it, and trying new things, which we love, and we would love any more updates that you have for us.
Well, thank you guys so much for listening to another episode of the Milk Minute and please don’t forget we have another podcast now, which is so crazy. It’s called Beyond the Boob. Yes. I’d love to see you over there and give you all the TMI information about my pregnancy and what’s been going on with me.
For the past, however many weeks I’ve been pregnant. Sometimes it feels like two seconds and sometimes it feels like a hundred years. And I do about one free episode a month. And then all the other episodes are available by subscription through Apple podcasts or through our Patreon at the 5 a month and up membership levels.
And that is at Patreon. com slash milk minute podcast. All right. We’ll see you over there. Have a good one.
