Darillyn Starr wrote about adoptive breastfeeding being presented as a "Gee Whiz" fact, and how encouraged other mothers or mothers-to-be can be by that.
  While I have been happy to use the example of adoptive breastfeeding for decades as an encouragement for women with supply problems, long experience has led me to consider relactation as part of normal lactation.  The human body certainly is an amazing thing - certainly the female body (I don't know a lot about the male version).
   In a truly breastfeeding culture (and this can include a family of sub-group within a Western culture, such as Australia) women sometimes drop in and out of breastfeeding and don't always remark on it, not seeing it as "gee whiz".  And this can be without pills and potions and galactagogues.  The progression that most people think can only be 1. breast--> 2. mixed feeding (breast+solids/other fluids)--> 3. weaned, can alternatively be:
a) 1. breast--> 2. mixed feeding--> 3. weaning-->4. mixed feeding(breast+other food)--> 5. weaning, with steps 4-5 occasionally repeated more than once.
b) 1. artificial feeding-->2.mixed feeding--> 3. breastfeeding--> 4. mixed feeding--> 5. weaning, perhaps with some reversion/repetition of stages.
c) 1. mixed feeding (breast with top-ups by cup or bottle)-->2. breastfeeding-->3. mixed feeding(breast+solids, and then other drinks)-->4. weaning.  Once again, there may be a return to breastfeeding without the other foods, or the proportion of breastmilk to other food may rise is response to sickness, an emergency
situation (hurricane, bushfires, engine failure of car or boat).
d) 1. mixed feeding(breast with artificial top-ups)--> 2. artificial feeding (because of increased top-ups)--> 3. breastfeeding (after relactation)--> 4. mixed feeding (breast+solids) ... and so on.
    Okay, we fight to help mothers get breastfeeding going - at all - in an environment that is very hostile to breatfeeding (partly by treating artificial feeding and, particularly, use of bottles, as normal and culturally desirable).  However, where a local environment of breastfeeding friendliness has grown up, with support there and breastfeeding taken for granted, the situation is different.  (See my case series in teh Feb 1993 Journal of Tropical Pediatrics - full reference in Lactnet Archives.)
     Virginia
     in sunny Brisbane

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