I think he is stretching quite a bit with his conclusions.  Unless he
randomly assigned "no solids until 7 months" and "solids before 7 months"
then all he has is a correlation.

Our doctor doesn't routinely do hematocrits.  She requested to do one on
my son at 10 months because he was breastfed and not eating anything iron
fortified, she says in her practice it is typically these babies that she
sees come up with low hematocrits.  She's a fine doctor in general, I have
been training her for many years.  :)  In the interest of education and
providing a counter example, I consented to the hematocrit.  It came back
just fine.

I mentioned to her that the reason she might be seeing babies come up with
low hematocrits in those situations might have to do with the fact that
most of those babies are getting fluids other than breastmilk.  She asked
about bottles or sippy cups during the appointment and was close to
shocked when I told her he gets all his fluids at the breast, so
apparently it is unusual for babies to be getting a full complement of
breastmilk, being substituted by water or juice.

With respect to this study, when a child doesn't start on solids until 7
months, to me this says this is a family that is more likely to laid back
and follows the child's lead in things about readiness for solids and
stuff.  The families that are into "early development" and "early
independance" are more likely to try to introduce solids earlier and to
start the baby on other fluids earlier.  The "early solids" cohort will
contain all the families like this, and none of them will be in the "7
month" group.  I would want to see a study that made sure that these
babies who were "breastfed" were getting all their fluids at the breast
and therefore not being shortchanged on the iron in breastmilk.

As for when my son started on solids, we took a very laid back approach.
While he was very interested in our eating and food as early as 3 months,
he wasn't yet ready to *eat*.  He did, however, want to *taste*, and we
let him lick stuff on our fingers and gnaw on larger stuff.  There wasn't
really a specific time that he started eating, just that as time went by,
more and more stuff went down instead of out.

If we're going with the natural approach on "Mother Nature doesn't make
breastmilk incomplete," then we should also consider the natural approach
in that she won't prompt babies to start eating of their own free will
(instead of having it shoveled into them) before they are ready.

Mary Conner
IBCLC wanna-be

On Fri, 21 Apr 2000, Virginia G Thorley wrote:

> >
> A study done by Pisacane in 1995 ---
>
>  Kathy D wrote:
> > where were these infants
> > from?  What part of the world?
> >
>  Italy.  It was done in Italy.
>      Virginia
>       Virginia Thorley
>
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