Kathy, there was a physchiatrist who lectured at an ILCA conf. several years
ago named Zeskind who had an intriguing theory about the prenatal
environment.  He postulated (and has published on) something like an Apgar
rating for the prenatal environment of the mother/fetus dyad which he named
the "ponderal indices".  For example, anything which chronically altered a
preg woman's stress hormone levels, or changed her biochemically (such as
illness, drugs, smoking, alcohol.)  He had some interesting research about
differences  in the pitch of infant cries (which he claimed was a marker for
neurological status) between infants whose mothers had had healthy
pregnancies with good ponderal indices, and mothers who were constantly
stressed, ill, or influenced by drugs.  He claims that infants with poor
ponderal indices are often born very fussy, with irritating cries, and that
a vicious cycle of poor prenatal environement influences baby to be hard to
sooth postpartum, which in turn stresses poorly coping parents, leading to
potential for abuse, which further damages the child.  I found the whole
idea very interesting, coming as I do from a background of child abuse
social work.  I also heard Niles Newton once say she was concerned about the
neurodevelopment of young infants in poor institutional day care, because
she felt that constant flooding of the system by adrenals which were "always
on" in a fight or flight anxiety mode would have detrimental influence on
long term neurological function.  So I know what you mean when you caution
against belief systems which presuppose that "bad thoughts" can poison milk,
etc. but there may be some wisdom there we shouldn't dismiss completely out
of hand.
Barbara

Barbara Wilson-Clay, BS, IBCLC
Private Practice, Austin, Texas
Owner, Lactnews On-Line Conference Page
http://moontower.com/bwc/lactnews.html