Sorry I'm late posting on this one. But this topic came up recently at the hospital where I work, and I found it very interesting. It was in relation to the PKU screening and the amount of protein that breastfed babies consume. Because having several good protein feeds prior to the PKU test increases it's accuracy, a nurse brought up the idea of delaying the PKU test for breastfed babies until closer to discharge. Because most are not getting a high volume of milk on the first day. One study I read actually said that one the first day the average breastfed babies consumed 1.5 ml of colostrum per feed at 10 feeds per day for a total of 15 ml of colostrum in the first 24 hours.
We know that mammals that make milk thats higher in protein and lower in carbohydrates, have much faster weight gain during the first year of life, such as cows. They double their birth weight in 47 days, versus 182 for humans. The protein level in formula is adjusted to be closer to human milk, but since infants consume larger volumes of formula, the average formula fed baby will consume 5 times more protein in the first month of life than a human milk fed baby.
Colostrum is higher in protein, but that increased protein is due to the high level of antibodies, lymphocytes, cytokines, lactoferrin, lysozymes, growth factors, etc. Which are primarily made up of proteins. Colostrum is "higher" in protein than later milk, but it's not what I would really call high protein feeds, especially when you consider the very small volume of milk that the infant is ingesting. I had an MD challenge me on this once, when I said that early high protein feeds are associated with increased risk of childhood obesity. And he said that colostrum is high in protein. It's not exactly a large volume of protein they are eating when they make take in only 15 ml on the whole first day. Where I work, we often have a hard time convincing parents not to give 40 ml of formula per feed on the first day.
Tricia Shamblin, RN, IBCLC
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