Feeding breast milk to the whole family through our COVID outbreak

Just one week after returning to work from maternity leave I found myself isolating having contracted Covid. It was day five of lessons (I’m a secondary school teacher) and I started to feel unwell. When I took a test the dreaded double line appeared…

I noticed my expressed breast milk was a different colour after testing positive for Covid

I perhaps could have predicted the positive test as the night before I had been expressing milk for my 10 month old baby girl when I noticed a green hue was present in the milk. It had a distinctly different colour to the milk I had expressed the previous week. AMAZING!

I realised my milk had already adapted for my baby before I’d felt unwell, and before any sign of a positive test had appeared!

I realised my milk had already adapted for my baby before I’d felt unwell, and before any sign of a positive test had appeared!

Antibodies in breast milk remain for 10 months after Covid infection – study

My parents wanted to use my antibody-rich breast milk

In the hours that followed I increased my pumping sessions to get as much antibody-rich milk frozen as possible as a stash incase needed. Then, I got a call from my parents. They wanted some milk too. Mum said ‘if you can spare any of your milk we’d love to have some now you are producing those fantastic antibodies’ my heart could have burst! THAT IS ACCEPTANCE!!

I already make soap and lotion out of my milk and use it on my babies, and my mum uses it too for her skin condition, she also takes the old bags of expressed milk after I’ve used them to get the last drops for her skin, but this was another level.

Within an hour they were at my door and a covid milk care package was ready for them on the doorstep. 30 mins later a picture of two cups of tea made with my milk came through. As the days went on I gave milk to my daughters, parents and husband. The improvement in my youngest daughter after increasing her feeds was phenomenal.

As the days went on I gave milk to my daughters, parents and husband. 

We are all positive, isolating and drinking my breast milk

I am all too aware of many people in society thinking exactly what the title of the article says, but to me, as I brought covid into the house from work it was the least I could do. Everyone who drank my milk did so because they wanted to. Because they recognised that there is benefit to it, especially now I have the virus.

As I write this we are all positive and isolating apart from my parents, we are all drinking the milk, and it is working wonders! 

My milk continues to change in colour and consistency

Over the last few days, I have seen the milk change in other ways too. The freshly expressed milk contains small fatty blobs I can notice only when I pour the milk into the storage bags, and also when I do this the milk seems to stick to the sides of the bottles more. By day 3 of my symptoms even my freshly expressed milk had a green hue at the bottom (could be higher water content, but a lot of covid positive mums are experiencing this!).

My milk is my normal fatty yellow colour at the top (hindmilk rich in usual requirements), however it is thicker and slightly more yellow than usual, therefore possibly containing covid antibodies as it is currently resembling more of a colostrum nature. There’s a lot of debate at the moment on this topic! Blue milk is definitely higher water but the cause for green milk is still in debate amongst scientists.

People’s response on social media has been really positive

I’ve been documenting my Covid experience and breast milk journey on Instagram and the response from others has been really positive, and it’s helped open people’s eyes to the power of breast milk.

Here are just some of the responses I received when I let people know I was sharing my Covid positive breast milk:

‘Wow what a fantastic idea, thanks’

‘OMG I would definitely consider doing this, thank you’

‘That is awesome’ 

‘Wow, so cool, thank you for sharing’

‘OMG I love your parents, This needs to be normal and it just isn’t normalised at all. Thank you so much for sharing! ’ 

I just hope this article reaches even more people and allows others to benefit from my experience.

Disclosure: This story is someone’s own personal account of breastfeeding and Covid. The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and are not upheld in any way by Boobingit. Boobingit is not responsible for any outdated or factual inaccuracies which may appear. Please seek the help of a medical professional should you need it whilst breastfeeding.