Hi, My family took a trip to Erendira, Mexico this weekend as part of a dental/mission trip. Our church goes down a couple of times a year to the small village on the coast. We do dental work for the villagers and give health education. This time we also visited the labor camp. The labor camp has migrant workers who live in aluminum row houses - well, rooms. They have a small school and rows of washing sinks outside. This is considered one of the nicer camps. Because the workers were called back to the cannery we did not see many patients. We saw young mothers and their babies though. The girls often have babies at 14 - 15 yrs. One mama had her baby wrapped tightly on her back with a wrap. I wanted a picture but when I asked she refused. Later, inside the clinic, I saw her young child standing between her mothers legs on her tiptoes to breastfeed. Mom had easily pulled up her shirt exposing one breast - scissors hold, while baby fed. I asked again, through a translator if I could take a picture and she said yes! I am hoping it comes out. The baby was small - looked about 11 mos. but was 23 months. The baby is not walking or talking and looked like she might have Down's. The local nurse had just finished telling the mother to "stop that", meaning breastfeeding as the RN thought the (healthy looking), baby was malnourished. I was so sorry. I could not say anything but complimented the mother on her mothering and breastfeeding. Maybe she will chose to continue breastfeeding! We walked into town and visited two of the very small grocery stores, one had about 8 cans of powdered formula. It was dated 10/04 and was very dusty. Nice to think it is not a fast mover! Most of the mothers I talked to stated they breastfed for at least 6 months. Many mothers had their babies in wraps or slings - those from newborn to 3 years. The babies also were not close in age, most were about 2 - 3 years apart. On another subject, a nice article about our hospital breastfeeding clinic was in the paper Sunday. You can view it at www.nctimes.com, scroll down to the Life section. The Lactation Consultant leading the support group is my daughter, who is also IBCLC working at the same hospital as I do. Judith Markham IBCLC RLC RLLL *********************************************** 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(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html