Hi lactnetters-- you will soon be seeing a lot of new people on the net,
there is a lot of enthusiasm for getting into lactnet. Today began and ended
with plenary sessions, with two breakouts in midday.  The first plenary
session was with Miriam Labbock's models for cost savings associated with
breast feeding-- these were her models based on several assumptions for
"guesstimating" the annual cost savings that would be realized in the US if
all moms bf their babies at least 12 wks, and based only on fairly
conservative assumptions-- her guess, arrived at two different ways, is
nearly $4 billion annually to the US, primarily from improved health
outcomes. She then subtracted her estimates of the costs to do that-- I think
her estimates were based on an assumption of what it would cost,if we were
already there (job benefits for moms for an additional 6 wks and the cost of
training an additional 1000 LC's/yr to replace retiring LC's. I don't think
her estimate was intended to estimate the cost of getting there-- i.e.
advocacy, many new LC's, the cost of US Hospitals going baby freindly, etc.
Basically her talk pointed for the need to get better data on this, so it
doesn't need to be just guesstimates.

Concurrent sessions today included Molly Pessyl on the journey to Baby
Friendliness, Susan Kellogg-Spadt on Breast Exam and Assessment (which I
atttended), Jan Ellen Brown on Cystic Fibrosis, Lactnet's Queen, Martha
Brower, on "How to be a Politically Active LC";  Miriam Labbock on the
Lactational Amenorrhea Method (LAM) of birth control-- she had spoken about
this at LLLI also-- Heather Harris on "sticks and stones"; Cheston Berlin on
Hepatitiis, TB, HIV and other infx dis; Michael Woolridge on diagnosed low
milk output (this is the one I attended-- and he put yet a new spin on it);
Sandra Lang on Mechanical vs Hand Expression; Linda Gort-Walton on the Sexual
Abuse Survivor.

The Last plenary was Cheston Berlin with an interesting discussion re silicon
implants.

I had dinner with several Lactnetters, then attended the Unicef benefit for
BFHI about the politics involved with the ratification of the US 19th
amendment (granting women the right to vote), a feminist movement thwarted by
the powers of the day, and a story so parallel in its politics to the BFHI
issues. If I were'nt on about day 8 of sleep deprivation I would launch into
another longwinded post re feminism, etc. but I will let it be. Suffice it to
say that it was wonderful the way the play used the original primary words of
the real people of the day-- I had forgotten that I used to know that stuff,
from a previous life of mine and I'm not speaking reincarnation, just high
school or college, but as I heard the words there was a flood of recognition.
Remember Sojourner Truth-- "and ain't I a woman?"  As upset as we are in 1995
about women's issues, we in the US take our right to vote for granted, but
really, 75 years is just yesterday-- All five of my maternal grandmother's
children were already born when it was finally ratified-- my mother was two.
My mother's mother was actually a college graduate ('06, Bucknell U) but when
I asked her, when I was in high school, how she had felt back then when the
vote was finally achieved, I remember her saying that, with five children to
care for, she was too busy to notice. And yet it was from my grandmother,
with her interest in genealogy, particluarly her mother's line, that I gained
an historic sense of self, of legitimate personhood, that sustains me. Her
maternal grandmother's maternal grandmother, Leah Fisher, was a midwife in
Pennsylvania; my mother still has her midwife's bowl-- passed down through 6
generations of women, my daughter will be the 8th.  And how recent the right
to vote in that chain of mothers and daughters, -- only my mother and I have
always known it.

Looking worldwide, somebody here said Australia was the first country where
women won the right to vote; the folks here at ILCA from New Zealand said no,
it was NZ.  Any of you out there want to set the record straight?

Have you ever noticed that the more woman friendly a country seems to be
politically, i'e. the more feminist a country seems to be, the higher the bf
rates? empowerment....

G'night guys

Tina