Milk Memories
Small true stories about milk, from myth and the movies to the lab. Each one is sourced, and each one is a door into something bigger.
The margins of NURturing deSirE are full of them: a goddess, a Victorian pump, a Talmudic sage. Here they get room to breathe. The name is a nod to The Memory of Milk, because milk keeps more history than we give it credit for.
Myth & History
Goddesses, sages and inventors: milk has been in the story from the start.
Can Men Breastfeed? Two Nursing Fathers, From the Talmud to Humboldt A sages’ debate and a naturalist’s notebook, more than a thousand years apart, describe the same thing: a father who fed his baby himself. 
How the Milky Way Got Its Name: Hera’s Spilled Milk Our galaxy is named for a letdown. The Greeks told it first, and the painters never stopped. 
Oppai, Mamma, Mammal: The Words for Breasts Are Words for Milk In Japanese, Chinese and Latin, the word for breast and the word for milk keep turning out to be the same word. Even “mammal” is one. 
The First Breast Pump Patent: A Bellows in a Box, 1854 Before motors and apps, there was a rubber cup, a glass pipe and a bellows. Pop Culture
Where milk turns up on screen and on stage, and what it says about us.
Friends, “The One with the Breast Milk”: Why Ross Wouldn’t Taste It Season 2, episode 2: everyone has tried it except Ross. Cantaloupe juice, apparently. 
Ted Lasso’s Milk Puns: “Bridget Jones’s Dairy” and the Milk Sisters Season 1, episode 8: waiting on two shareholders named Milk, Ted can’t help himself. 
The Manary Gland: Robert De Niro’s Fake Breast in Meet the Fockers A grandfather, a rubber breast and a baby who needs soothing: the most famous nursing prop in comedy. The Milking Mothers of Mad Max: Fury Road In George Miller’s wasteland, milk is currency, and the women who make it are kept like machinery. The New York Chef Who Made Cheese From Breast Milk In 2010, a chef’s homemade cheese became the most talked-about plate in Manhattan, and it was never on the menu. 
The Sopranos’ Breast Milk Scene: Furio’s Remedy for Sore Eyes Season 2, episode 5, nineteen minutes in: the newest man on Tony’s crew offers the oldest home remedy there is. The Science of Milk
What the research says about the only fluid made for us.
Can You Make Breast Milk Without Being Pregnant? Sometimes, yes. Adoptive parents have done it, and in 2018 a medical journal reported the first documented case in a transgender woman. 
Do Breasts Warm Up During Nursing? Yes, a Little Thermometers have caught it happening: a fraction of a degree, right where it counts. 
Does a Baby’s Saliva Tell the Breast What to Make? It’s one of the internet’s favorite milk facts. The truth is more interesting: part proven, part beautiful hypothesis. 
Does Breast Milk Change During the Day? Yes, Milk Keeps a Clock Morning milk and midnight milk aren’t the same drink. Here’s what shifts, and when. 
Does Breast Size Affect Milk Supply? And Is It Normal for One to Be Bigger? Short answers: not the way you’d think, and yes. Does Music Help Milk Flow? What the Studies (and the Cows) Say Mothers who listened to music while pumping made more milk. So, it was reported, did cows who heard R.E.M. What Is Colostrum? Why the First Milk Is Called Liquid Gold The first milk is ready before the baby is, a teaspoon at a time, and it’s packed.