Colostrum is the yellowish breastmilk that is produced in the first few days after baby's birth and before normal lactation begins. Colostrum is especially rich in nutrients and antibodies, and is the perfect food for a newborn baby. Even if you have decided to use formula rather than breastmilk, you may wish to breastfeed your newborn for at least a few days after birth, so that he or she can receive the antibody protection and nutritional benefits offered by colostrum.

For thousands of years, there was no such thing as a bottle-fed baby! Then, the medical world changed: in fact, we went through a period when even doctors were telling new mothers not to breast feed! Now we know better. All the immunity within the mother is transferred to the baby through her breastmilk.

When a new baby was NOT breastfed, researchers would find almost ZERO antibodies in the baby. Those antibodies were NOT there. That baby was at risk. When a baby was breast-fed, researchers found the antibodies inside the newborn baby's system, they couldn't deny them. They were there. A newborn baby has no antibodies - but within a few days on breast milk, the baby suddenly has a fully functioning immune system! A miracle.

So, there was much research done to try to work out how breast milk could carry the benefit of the mother's immune system over to the baby. It was a puzzle for quite some time. The scientists determined that the baby could not get the antibodies themselves from the mother's milk. These antibodies are living cells - protein - and the body would simply use it as food.

There is an important technical point here: When a human ingests living cells, or even dead animal cells, into the body through the mouth, the digestive system treats it all like food. It might be a very valuable living immune system cell, but as far as the baby is concerned, it's only more food to digest.

If you take these same living cells (even immune system cells) and INJECT them into a human body, the body treats them like invading bugs. There is a rejection mechanism which protects the human body from injected living things. The body even rejects ANY protein substance injected into the bloodstream. If you ground up steak and made it very fine and injected it, it would be terribly harmful. Your immune system would attack the steak as an invading bug.

So, don't think that you boost your baby's immune system by them absorbing the antibodies in the milk - it doesn't work that way.

Antibodies are living cells and the new baby could not possibly get them through the mother's milk which went into the baby's body through the mouth and stomach. That milk DOES have antibodies in it, but they are nothing more than food to the baby. No living cell can possibly pass through the digestive system and get into the body through the mouth and stomach.

So, the antibodies in a baby could not be there through being absorbed from the mother's milk, even though the mother's milk does have those antibodies in it.

The many immune system cells in the mother did not, somehow, get transferred over to the baby. But the baby who got breast fed ended up with immediate immune system cells and the baby who did not get breast fed did not get those cells.

Numerous studies were done of this problem and finally the scientists identified a 'transfer factor' which was transferred in the mother's milk. This 'transfer factor' was not a cell, it was not a germ, it was something which hadn't really ever been identified before. The researchers would use 'screens' to filter out anything as large as a living cell - and the 'factor' still got through. So, the scientists realised that whatever the 'factor' was, it was smaller than any cell - it probably was a molecule.

Then the researchers found ways to filter out the large molecules, but the 'factor' still got through these screening techniques. That meant it had to be something very small - a small molecule?

It was much too small to see with a microscope. They looked, but couldn't find it.

Finally, rather than give it some fancy new name, scientists just stuck with the word 'factor' to explain this 'thing'.

They called it the 'transfer factor', this 'thing' in mother's milk which gets transferred from her to the newborn baby and creates INSIDE the baby an entire immune system, almost overnight. It was almost as if, as soon as this transfer factor got into the new baby's body it started manufacturing exactly the type of antibodies which were called for in the transfer factor. The baby's system did this even though there were no invading bugs. So, if one of those bugs entered the baby's body, the baby's immune system was ready even though the baby itself had never personally been attacked by that bug previously.

In addition to this vitally important 'transfer factor', colostrum is high in carbohydrates (sugars), and protein and low in fat (as newborn babies find fat hard to digest at first). Newborns have very small tummies , and colostrum delivers its nutrients in a very concentrated low-volume form. Because of the high sugar content, it has a mild laxative effect, encouraging the passing of the baby's first stool, meconium: this clear bilirubin (which is a waste product of dead red blood cells which is produced in large quantities at birth due to blood volume reduction), from the infant's body and helps prevent jaundice. It also contains vital immunoglobins and growth factors.