The Milk Trials Pt. 01

05/01/2021

The women have all arrived and are getting settled in. Some of the women are experiencing discomfort due to changes in time zones and as such their pumping schedules have been adjusted. Unfortunately, their bodies aren't adjusting that quickly. This presents an opportunity to analyze how their bodies react.

The three women who are experiencing changes in time zone are Cassandra Ali, Elana Cui, and Rebecca Shaw. We will be specifically monitoring Ms. Shaw because of her unique dietary requirements. Her doctor has had her adjust her diet accordingly for travel so that she can continue to meet her caloric requirements and maintain her weight.

I looked over her meal plan and it will actually put her at 7,000kcals for the day, 708kcals more than normal, so I will be specifically analyzing her milk over the next 24 hours to see if that has an effect on the composition of her milk. This entry will be specifically dedicated to her for these reasons.

She arrived on the NIH transport at roughly 13:37EST and one of the first things she was commented on was her need to pump as she was around 90 minutes overdue. When I first encountered her en route to the pumping center for what we nicknamed "the Milky Seven" (it needs work but it's all we have right now), she had heavy duty nursing pads sticking out of her shirt and they were beginning to soak through. In the pump center, we guided her to her station with all the materials she requested and she immediately shed her shirt and bra and went to work. I could barely get my iPad out to begin recording notes before she started. Below are my findings:

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Date: 05/10/2021

Time: 13:55EST

Materials Selected:

- Baby Buddha pump

- LaVie Heated Vibrating Massagers

- 24mm Flanges

- Silicone nipple cushions

- 1L bottles

- Theragun Massager

- Pumping Harness

Notable Omissions:

- Full Coverage Pumping Bra

Appearance before pumping:

Extremely engorged. Many prominent veins and glands. Nipples fully distended and erect with steady droplets falling.

During pumping:

Streams flowing almost immediately once suction begins. No use of let down mode. Let down begins 1'21" after pumping begins. Interestingly, the pump needs to be cut off after let down because the flow is too fast for the pump to keep up with, despite the fact that the pump is one of the strongest money can buy. The massagers and Theragun are being used extensively throughout as Ms. Shaw is trying to "break up her milk" as she puts it. We have yet to see if the vibrations and heat help her empty quicker but for now we are just letting her find relief. Ms. Shaw is reporting major discomfort but is claiming that she feels much more relieved and her facial expressions give credence to these claims as she originally appeared to be in agony yet now is sighing in relief. Her flow tails off 2'03" after her let down and she cuts the pump back on. She fills the 1L bottles in 23 minutes for her left breast and 26 for her right. After she filled those, we collected it and measured the weight of the bottles. She produced 2.078L of milk in this session but the interesting metric is that it weighed roughly 3.1 kilograms. Mind you, a gallon of cow's milk one can buy at a store weighs roughly 3.9 kilograms. Adjusted for scale, a gallon of Ms. Shaw's milk would weigh 45.9% more than that of a dairy cow which is roughly 9 times that of an average human.

Post pump:

We gave Ms. Shaw some acetaminophen cold packs as well as some cream for her nipples given that the BabyBuddha is known to be hard on nipples. Further study will be required on why her milk is so much more fatty and nutrient dense than that of an average human woman.

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I've followed her for the rest of the day and we've been specifically monitoring her in order to ensure that she adjusts well and that her travel doesn't cause a bout of mastitis.

To be safe we've given her an experimental version of sunflower lecithin even stronger than what she's already taking. Early samples of her milk show that it has a higher fat and nutrient make-up than normal so we're interested to see if the levels fluctuate with her caloric intake. Her daily total came out to around 7.8L which we believe is a result of her pumping schedule being delayed though we also would like to see if that also resulted from her increased caloric intake.

By the time she went to our living area to go to bed, she was complaining of tenderness in her nipples from all the pumping she's done today. If her complaints continue we will have to delay our nipple tests given that tenderness and other adverse conditions of the nipples will interfere with our results.

Ms. Shaw will be of great interest throughout the course of this study. Understanding how and why her milk is composed the way it is can not only help other mothers with nutrient deficient milk, but can also be used to create nutrient dense foods that can be used to aid in things like exercise, medicine, fitness, and myriad other uses.

Ms. Ali and Ms. Cui haven't had as much difficulty adjusting which is very good for our tests. I would like to begin the nipple tests with Ms. Cui tomorrow given that her nipples are quite unique. Ms. Ali is also a person of interest in the nipple tests given that she also has above average nipples even if they aren't to the same levels as Ms. Cui's. Unfortunately for Ms. Ali, she is a person of interest in almost every series of tests we have to run given that she is exceptional in almost every metric that we're studying, but hopefully we can gain understanding to her condition.

We have the women following a strict sleeping schedule in order to best mitigate the effects differences in sleep can cause in lactation. There has been time built in for pump sessions in the middle of the night for the mothers that have one and we also have a team of researchers that will collect samples overnight so we can document prolactin levels, brain activity, quality of sleep, and other sleep issues. I will update as we collect more information.