Hormonal crisis in newborns. What Slavic Witches Could Do

Hormones are able to cause the most complex biochemical processes in the body, especially in large doses, especially in the body of a newborn baby. And if you do not have a medical education, many things that happen to a newborn may seem shocking to you.

For example, breast milk. In both boys and girls, the mammary glands can swell and milk is secreted. No need to panic, this is one of the options for the norm, does not require medical or medical intervention. This is just the action of prolactin, the “milk hormone”, in the mother’s blood, its content was increased during pregnancy, penetrating the placenta, and in this way prolactin affected the child. Discharge from the chest can be both transparent and white, in fact, milk. If the liquid turns pink, this may mean that the child has a blockage of the milk ducts, it is necessary to massage several times in a circular motion around the nipple (in no case squeezing the milk!), Usually this goes away without any other intervention. A doctor should be consulted only if the skin around the nipple of the child turns red, hurts (crying when touched), the breast is hot and with seals - this is called neonatal mastitis. Yes, this happens, and only in such cases it is necessary to act immediately.

WHAT TO DO IF THE BABY HAS MILK FROM THE BREAST?

Previously, before hormones were discovered and their effect on humans was studied, such milk was called "witch's milk", while attributing some superhuman abilities to the child. Of course, such prejudices have nothing to do with logic and science, and if one of your grandmothers, for example, says something similar about a witch in the family, you better not take it to heart.

As a rule, milk secretions in the crumbs pass within a month or two, when the concentration of prolactin in the growing body decreases. It is not worth interfering in this process, the only thing that is necessary is to follow hygiene procedures, wiping the nipples with wet gauze, which can be dipped in weakly brewed chamomile. Compresses are prohibited! Any attempts to express milk from a baby, firstly, can be too painful, and secondly, very dangerous, because it is very easy to harm such a small person.

There is no need to worry about the fact that swelling of the mammary glands in a newborn will somehow affect health or - most absurdly from the point of view of science - sexual orientation. Oddly enough, even such strange questions can worry the mothers of boys.

Take care of yourself and be happy.

The best way to make children good is to make them happy. /ABOUT. Wilde/

When it comes to the peculiar language of parents (by the way, a whole special project dedicated to the so-called “mother's language” was published on “Hedgehog-Hedgehog”), one-year-olds and slow-witted people immediately come to mind, right? Few of us think about attachment theory or lotus childbirth, simply because these terms are not used much outside of small groups (as opposed to hard-core!). However, as soon as we have children, an amazing lexicon, which until then was behind seven seals, is revealed to us, understandable only to parents and specialists in the birth and upbringing of children: joint sleep, DPT, complementary foods, fontanel, oxytocin, Sulkovich's test (a useless thing, by the way) , walkers, disembarkation! Amazing fact, but all these words have a meaning and each of them corresponds to a phenomenon existing in nature. NAN has collected ten more strange concepts that you may well encounter on your parenting journey.

Lanugo

This is the fluff that covers the fetus in the womb. Yes, while you are expecting a baby, he grows soft thin hairs on himself (they say, being covered with them, he resembles a chicken), which will fall out shortly before birth. Some, however, are born with remnants of lanugo on their backs or even their foreheads. Do not be alarmed if you have a downy baby - you don’t need to roll a bread crumb over it, the presence of these hairs does not affect his temperament in any way, and in general, they will fall out soon.

Meconium

The result of the baby's first bowel movement outside the womb. Serves as an excellent illustration of the idea that parenthood is not your resort. Because it is very, very difficult to wash off this shoe polish, which consists of substances that the baby absorbed while in the mother’s stomach (including mucus and amniotic fluid, for example).

Cheese grease

Great name, isn't it? We know this strange substance under another name - primordial lubricant (sounds no better). This is such a greasy (looking gray-yellow-whitish) mass, with which the baby is covered at birth. It is designed to protect the skin of the fetus from damage and the influence of amniotic fluids, as well as to help him pass through the birth canal on the day of his birth. Babies in cheese grease don't look like dumplings with cheese sauce.

Wharton's jelly

This is such a biological jelly, of which the umbilical cord mainly consists. This gelatinous mucous tissue protects the internal umbilical cord vessels from all kinds of damage and does not allow them to make any dangerous inflection. Imagine, you just had sex, and as a result you got a whole restaurant of fusion cuisine - jelly, cheese, yolk. B-r-r-r!

Lochia

A phenomenon that, quite likely, no one warned you about. This is bloody discharge that will come out of the genital tract after childbirth, regardless of whether they were natural or operational. This will continue for several weeks. Set up. Scam!

Tubercles of Montgomery

Also known as Montgomery's glands (what a great man!). These are such small formations located on the periphery of the female nipple and stand out especially towards the end of the pregnancy. They are noticeable throughout the entire period of GW, but are not physically felt in any way. Some doctors believe that the secret secreted by the glands helps the child to recognize the mother by smell.

Colostrum

Let's move on to lactation exercises. Colostrum is the substance that a woman's breasts secrete in the first few days after childbirth, before the first milk is produced. It often seems to young mothers (and nannies in maternity hospitals scare them with this) that they don’t have any milk, because pathetic drops of some kind of fatty garbage stand out from their breasts. So, this fat garbage is a real miracle that provides the newborn with all the necessary nutrients all the time while the body is preparing to open the floodgates of lactation.

witch's milk

No, this is not the milk that your roommate leaked while you were trying to milk yourself without success. This is milk that is secreted (more precisely, it can be secreted in some rather rare cases) from the baby's breast in the first days after childbirth. The child can be of any gender. The secretion of milk only indicates that maternal hormones are still rebelling in the baby's body. This condition is not dangerous, does not require treatment or a call to the Spanish Inquisition.

lactostasis

The World Health Organization believes that lactostasis is a complex phenomenon associated both with the stress experienced by a young mother against the backdrop of epochal events taking place in her life, and with excessive milk production. With lactostasis - stagnation in the ducts of the mammary glands - the secretion from the breast (or both at once, combos) worsens (or stops altogether). At the same time, the chest hurts as if bruises have formed in it. Detailed instructions to combat lactostasis can be found.

salmon spot

This is a pink spot (or several) on the skin of a newborn. Often located on the head: on the forehead of the baby (then called the kiss of an angel) or on the neck (in this case called the bite of a stork). It does not pose any danger, it is not necessary to smear and treat these spots. Over time, they brighten, often completely disappear, sometimes remain barely noticeable. You can read more about salmon patches at

The article will tell you what is the reason that the discharge from the chest occurred in the child, as they indicate. You will learn what to do if there is a discharge from the chest.

For any mother, it is very important that her baby grows up healthy and happy. Any atypical behavior of the baby should be a sign for his mother that something is happening to the child. You need to carefully observe what changes occur, what worries the baby.

Some symptoms may indicate problems in a small organism. There are symptoms that at first are very frightening for inexperienced mothers. For example, many mothers are often frightened when a discharge from the baby appears from the chest. It turns out that this phenomenon is called galactorrhea. It is seen in both women and men.

The cause of galactorrhea in babies is the mothers themselves, or rather the increased norms of estrogens that entered the body with the bloodstream during the pregnancy period. Allocations are observed in both girls and boys.

Therefore, during pregnancy it is very important to strictly control the level of hormones in the blood, especially if there have already been cases of hormonal disruptions. The occurrence of galactorrhea in children can be a signal of the onset of serious endocrine diseases.

If galactorrhea occurs in a child before puberty, then it is possible that the level of prolactin and estrogen has increased significantly. What to do if the child has a discharge from the chest? Previously, such a phenomenon, which was observed in infants, was called "witch's milk." Often parents are lost in such a situation and do not know what to do. Usually, this phenomenon goes away on its own, subject to the rules of personal hygiene.

The most important thing to remember is that in no case should you squeeze out milk and warm the baby's chest with special ointments, as this can provoke the development of an inflammatory process. This phenomenon can last for about a month and will gradually pass. For longer-term cases, you should seek the advice of a doctor.

The attitude towards witches among all peoples was respectful and fearful, but each of them endowed this specific caste of women with their own characteristics. The names were also different. The word "witch" comes from the Proto-Slavic root -ved-, which was part of the lexeme "to know" and words of the same root. “Vedat” in Slavic meant “to know”.

The Slavs called witches women who had some kind of secret knowledge, wise in magic and able to do various fantastic things (fly, milk for a month, communicate with devils, etc.). The southern Slavs had another definition of these spiritually unscrupulous ladies - "veshtitsy". In the western regions, they were called "enchantresses", that is, those who know how to intoxicate, send spells, magic.

What Slavic Witches Could Do

Since pagans often attributed phenomena inexplicable to them to the actions of evil forces, witches were often blamed for all possible troubles. Over time, a specific image of the Slavic witch developed as a malevolent lady, with whom jokes are bad. If a cow in the village lost milk, the witch was to blame. Only Slavic witches possessed the ability to “take away” milk from a dairy cow.

How milk was taken from foreign cows

Women could be witches from birth (take over witchcraft by inheritance from their mother or grandmother) or "scientists". The first cows were milked by hand, as simple village women do. In order not to be noticed, they turned into objects (a wheel from a cart, a pitchfork) or animals (black cats, dogs, toads or pigs) and secretly made their way into the barn. The milking process continued until the cattle bled from the udder. Interestingly, women already born witches had a real tail.

"Scientific" witches became such by making a pact with the devil. They could get milk in another way. Once milking a cow by hand, the woman made a hole in the corner of her house and plugged it with a chopstick. After that, the witch could at any time pull out this chopik and get freshly milked milk, which flowed from the unsuspecting cow directly to the witch in the dwelling.

Milk, diluted with freshly picked dew, was a favorite delicacy of these women. Witches on holidays arranged receptions for evil spirits where they were treated to milk with dew. Often milked for this purpose and a month in the sky. The milking of the month was usually done by the South Slavic Veshtians. These cases are described in Ukrainian folklore.

In addition to such dirty tricks, Slavic witches could send diseases, drought or hail, which destroyed the entire crop and threatened people with hunger. If the witch made "spins" from spikelets of wheat or rye on the field, she thus sent a curse on death. Also if there was a lunar or solar eclipse, this was necessarily blamed on the restless witch, who could not wait to lime the human race.

Witch flights

In order to milk the young moon or steal it out of mischief - which also often happened - the witch had to rise into the air. For the Slavs, the ability to fly was the most unusual of what these ladies could do. Slavic witches usually flew on a poker or broom (a large, roughly crafted broom). Among the Scandinavian peoples, similar characters soared into the sky on a spinning wheel or on a horse skull, to which a red rooster was harnessed.

Another means for flying is rubbing a specially prepared drug into the skin. It was prepared in advance from various herbs and other “magic” items, such as belladonna, fly agaric, snake fat, crushed wolf bast bark, etc. These recipes are described in the 17th-century monument “The Evening Sorcerer”.

Before midnight, the witch undressed and rubbed her whole body with this remedy. Both pomelo and secret ointment were also used for flights to the Sabbat. A Slavic witch flew out of her house through a pipe, using it as a kind of portal for a quick ascent into the sky.

Witches could fly on the back of the devil. To ride this creature, you had to first lure him into your house. The devil can fly in through a chimney or a hole in the ceiling. To make this happen, the witch kept a damper in the oven open or broke some boards in the ceiling. There are many ways to ride the devil among the Slavs. One of them is to spit on his tail, after which the evil spirits become pliable.

Contact with the devil

The main difference between a real witch and an ordinary rural healer who collected herbs and knew how to heal people was the signing of an agreement with evil spirits. Thus, the woman sold her soul and after that did only evil. The sold soul always ended up in hell after the death of a person. It is interesting that the witches communicated with the devils in the most intimate way in ordinary life.

Some witches painfully experienced their forced communication with the devils. Other ladies felt equal to these beings. They could, for example, flirt with them or even communicate even more closely. Usually, intimate contacts with devils or incubus demons took place at regular gatherings of witches on Bald Mountain.

Stories about dancing with the devils at the Sabbath on Lysa Gora are characteristic of the beliefs of Ukrainians and Belarusians. Their folklore was influenced by the traditions of Western European peoples. Among the Russians, witches often gather in small groups on old poplar, elm, or willow. This usually happens on Kupala. During such gatherings, evil spirits decide who will get what kind of sacrifice for various unclean amusements.

Ergot collections

Another typical feature of the Slavic witch was the hunt for ergot. This word is called life force. There was a concept from the phrase "spore bread". This is bread that you can quickly get enough of, healthy, giving strength and health. If the bread was not satisfying, it was called "unarguable".

The witch reaped a thin strip of spikelets in a harvest field and took them to her barn. After that, only bad, unspore bread could be born on the field squeezed out in this way. For the owners of the land, this could mean only one thing - a famine year.

After death

The fact that by signing a pact with the devil, the witch doomed her soul to hellfire, did not save her from wandering after death among the living. The agreement with the devil was signed at midnight at a crossroads. The witch signed with her own blood. Usually the soul of such a woman could not find peace anywhere: neither in the next world, nor in this. Witches at night got up from their graves and continued to do evil.

For this reason, after the baptism of Russia, the Slavs began to pay special attention to ensuring that the deceased was buried on the ground consecrated by the church. It was believed that such a land does not accept a witch, and if a person is already buried on it, his soul will rest and will not wander among the living.