My compliments to Karleen Gribble for thinking outside the box on the issue of why Western women typically have difficulties in inducing full milk supplies. I HATE the "blame the victim" invectives that imply that either these women didn't try hard enough, didn't believe deeply enough, or that their helpers (us!) didn't plant enough positive suggestions and in some way undermined the process. I've seen a lot of adoptive couples, prob. 5-10 each year pver the past 16 years that I've practiced (and in the 5 yrs prior to that as a LLL Leader). While I believe the reports I have read in the lit about women elsewhere making full supplies, I've NEVER seen a full milk supply produced by an adoptive mother. I've seen MANY mothers who tried heroically, did everything they could, believed with all their hearts, and had supportive cheerleaders (including me), and they generally made some, but never all the milk their babies needed. Some of these women had hormonal reasons for infertility, and I think those issues impacted their ability to lactate fully. This is perhaps makes them different than the cases of re-and induced lactation in the developing world. Many of these descripptions may be perfectly of normal women (in terms of hormonal status) who are adopting orphaned infants. So that is probably a confounding factor. But I think Karleen is onto something with the issue of the body weight. We know that weight is an issue in terms of time of onset of menarche, resumption of ovulation following pregnancy, and maybe it is even an issue in when women enter menopause. There was an article on the front page of our local paper just yesterday reporting on the study linking obesity to relative risk of developing cancer, and I found it interesting that the effect was more striking in women than in men, and that the types of cancers are those influenced by higher ciruculating levels of estrogen. Excess body weight increases estrogen levels, and estrogen is a lactation suppressant. Perhaps there is not just an alteration of prolactin (which would influence the number of target receptors in the breasts?) but also some sort of over-ride by the higher estrogen levels. Barbara Wilson-Clay, BS, IBCLC Austin Lactation Associates LactNews Press www.lactnews.com *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html