This is passage is taken from The House of The Spirits of Isabel Allende. I love
it and I like to share it with all of you.
" Clara, on the other hand, was delighted with her daughter. She seemed to have
wakened from a protracted stupor and discovered the joy of being alive. She took
the child in her arms and would not let go. She went everywhere with her little
girl clutched to her breast, nursing her constantly without a set schedule and
without regard for manners or modesty, like an Indian. She did not want to
swaddle her, cut her hair, pierce her ears, or hire a nursemaid to take care of
her, and least of all to use milk manufactured in some laboratory, as all the
ladies did who could afford such luxuries. Nor would she accept Nana's
perscription for giving her cow's milk diluted with rice water, because, she
said, if nature had wanted human beings to be raised on that, she would have
made women's breast capable of secreting it. Clara spoke to the child all the
time, not in baby talk but in perfect Spanish, as if she were conversing with a
grown-up, the same addressed plants and animals; she was convinced that if she
had such goog results with flora and fauna, there was no reason why it should
not work with her own child. The combination of mother's milk and conversation
transformed Blanca into a healthy, almost pretty child who bore no resemblance
at all to the armadillo she had been at birth."
From The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende, Bantam Books.

Ana M. Parrilla, MD, MPH, IBCLC
Graduated School Of Public Health
Medical Sciences Campus, University of P.R.
Lactamar - Instituto de Lactancia Materna