A preliminary study determined that the administration of recombinant human prolactin (r-hPRL) to non-lactating women triggered the production of breast milk. Noting that other drugs used to augment lactation can have intolerable side effects, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School studied the use of r-hPRL in a sample of nine women for one week and determined that it warrants further clinical trials for its use as an agent to augment milk production (see Short-term prolactin administration causes expressible galactorrhea but does not affect bone turnover: pilot data for a new lactation agent. International Breastfeeding Journal, July 24, …read more

Singer Gwen Stefani raves to USA Today about being a mother to her six-month-old son Kingston James McGregor Rossdale (with husband Gavin Rossdale) and talks about how she prays that she can have another baby. It must be all those positive mothering hormones from the breastfeeding:
“I’m still nursing,” she says, “and I think it gives you superhuman powers.”
It’s true that breastfeeding promotes emotional health in the mother, resulting in less postpartum anxiety and depression than found in formula-feeding mothers.
Author Barbara Behrmann explains:
In fact, prolactin and oxytocin, the two main hormones involved in breastfeeding, have earned the warm and fuzzy nicknames …read more