Your breasts are powered by a two-million-year-old genetic code which knows how to regulate inflammation
Mostly, we can trust that our two-million-year-old breasts know what to do after we've had a baby, how to make all the milk your baby needs, how to avoid getting sick or sore.
This is how we have to start out breastfeeding, anyway, trusting that our breasts will know what to do. Our breasts really are remarkably resilient when making milk for our baby. There is an ancient genetic coding deep inside every cell of your body and breasts which knows what to do - but because we're humans, whose genetic coding is fundamentally shaped and awakened by cultural knowledge, we do need the right cultural (that is, health system!) information flowing in to activate our deep and ancient genetic potential.
For example, we need to know how to switch on our baby's two-million-year-old mammalian reflexes. We need to know that our breasts need frequent and flexible breastfeeds or milk removal to build production, we need to know what to do when mechanical pressures cause nipple pain.
And we need to know to offer the affected breast first and continue with frequent, flexible feeds when our breast becomes inflamed.
Unfortunately, our breasts are often let down by the culture around us. Our health system blind spots bring new, particularly modern complications into the life of your working breasts.
And that aside, even though most women's milk production is robust in response to their baby's needs, for some women things go wrong anyway, in a way that is completely out of our control. It's become clear that even our body's shape when we are teenagers, again shaped by sociocultural factors which are outside a teenage girl's control, impact upon our breasts when they are developing, which impacts upon our capacity to breastfeed our babies.
Yet in the big picture, our breasts have two-million-years of evolution behind them, and are remarkably resilient in the way they nurture our babies, and recover from problems. This includes the remarkably resilient mammary immune system response which switches on to heal breast inflammation.
The photo at the top of this page is of human DNA.
Recommended resources
Five ways to help prevent breast inflammation when you're lactating
Seven steps for when your milk-making breast develops a painful red lump