Dear All

 I am not going to buy into this discussion as I have just gone "nomaiil" because of pressure of other commitments (yes, even while bed-bound with 2 fractures).  I can, however, be contacted privately at [log in to unmask]

My recent research on what Australian mothers were/are actually doing as regards milk-sharing in the last 30 years has been accepted for publication in March.  I make no recommendations - I just present what mothers do, in one developed country.  I have some interesting findings and I shall be continuing research on this topic to include other parts of the world. More in this later.

In any discussion, as Jennifer paid, risks of sharing breastmilk are heavily focused on (including in readers' comments on the various newspaper articles on this topic).  In some comments, ordinary people seem to think that infection is inevitable, e.g. in sensationalised media reports of the wrong mother breastfeeding a baby in hospital.  Anyone would assume from this that feeding with AIM is the perfectly safe option, where there are no recalls and bans of batches, no life-threatening contaminations, no deficiencies from omitted nutrients that can cause infant damage.  Ho-hum, how wrong this assumption is!  Lactnetters are well aware of some of fhe hazards of artificial feeding - and most of us see only a fraction of the recall notices. 

Virginia
Dr Virginia Thorley, OAM, PhD, IBCLC, FILCA
Brisbane, Queensland
[log in to unmask]

On Tuesday Jennifer Tow wrote in reply to Kristen: 
>  Kristen,
> ---  Instead of running in fear, we should be finding 
> a way to make it work. ---
> I have a fair number of clients who have used donor milk from other 
> mothers--sometimes family members, sometimes not. They are intelligent 
> women making choices they feel are best for their babies. There needs to 
> be simple, reliable information available to women who wish to do this 
> to make it safe and normal. The truth is that many women feel normal 
> sharing milk and nursing one another's babies. I'd like to think that in 
> our profession we would be validating this inherently loving behavior 
> rather than allow it to be marginalized and even possibly criminalized. 
> And Kristen is right--when industry stands to lose money from grassroots 
> kinds of practices, those practices quickly become dangerous and 
> illegal.
> 

             ***********************************************

Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html
To reach list owners: [log in to unmask]
Mail all list management commands to: [log in to unmask]
COMMANDS:
1. To temporarily stop your subscription write in the body of an email: set lactnet nomail
2. To start it again: set lactnet mail
3. To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
4. To get a comprehensive list of rules and directions: get lactnet welcome