So this isn’t necessarily weird science, in that it’s not something so odd and out there you’d never see it. It’s more that the reason behind the phenomenon is a little funny.
I’m at a time of life where all my friends are getting married. And once they get married, they start spawning. I’m a fan of friend-spawn, and I certainly hope that they all grow up to be adorable awesome little geeks. I will take any kind of geek, science, history, literature, music, theater, I love them all, and I know my amazingly brilliant and talented friends and fellow bloggers will produce some amazingly talented spawn.
Being as I am around such spawning, I’ve had the opportunity to learn a good bit about babies. And all the charming, cute, sweet, adorable, disgusting, smelling, and gross things that go with them. One of the things I became very quickly interested in was lactation. You know. Boobs and milk. Breast is best. I never realized before that there are lactation consultants. I always thought lactation was one of those things, like sex and giving birth, that people kind of figure out eventually on their own. Survival of the species and all that, you’d figure lactation would be pretty high on the list of things that come naturally.
But in fact, for many women, it doesn’t come naturally, and there are certain interventions that you can do to prevent pain and soreness during breastfeeding. But for some women, it seems that all the counseling and intervention in the world isn’t working. They have consistent pain while nursing. And now, we know why. The reason? VACUUM BABIES!
McClellan et al. “Infants of mothers with persistant nipple pain exert strong sucking vacuums.” Acta Paediatrica, 2008.
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