Who knew? A breastfeeding mother who expresses her milk during the day and then gives it to her infant that evening may actually be depriving that baby of a good night’s sleep. Apparently, sedatives are released in breast milk and these are most concentrated in the breast milk at night.

Scientists studied the concentration of 3 nucleotides found in breast milk and found that concentrations of these chemicals were highest in the breast milk secreted at night. A small scale study found that by adding these nucleotides to the breast milk given to infants in the evening, they fell asleep more quickly and stayed asleep longer than if they had the breast milk without the nucleotides.So if you want your baby to sleep longer, be sure to label the time of day the milk was expressed.

Now I wonder if pharmaceuticals will attempt to manufacture those 3 nucleotides in pill form for the rest of us…

For more info on this, you can read the following article in New Scientist.