>Katherine
>
>I would really like to show your balloon discussion of fat
>content in human milk in discussion with my La Leche League
>group.  I wanted to ask you first to make sure it would be
>okay.  Please let me know.

Oh sure -- anything I post to LactNet or on my home page can be pulled off
and used in any context!  Glad you liked it.  I'm obviously a very "visual"
thinker.  I should perhaps have added that for different women the *person*
putting the white balloons back up may work at different speeds, so that
some babies could be off the breast for 10-20 minutes and go back and still
get mostly fat (yellow) ballons, while in other women the person putting the
white balloons back up (milk synthesis) works very quickly, so that only
10-15 minutes would be enough to restock the white balloons/low-fat milk supply.

In fact, I was also thinking of another analogy, which is perhaps a little
more obvious.  You know those nifty measuring cups where the spout pours
from the bottom?  You drain all the fat and juices off your turkey into one
of those measuring cups, let it sit for 30 minutes, then you can pour the
yummy juice off the bottom without getting all the fat, which floats on the
top.  Imagine that the baby is "nursing" from the breast and it works like
the measuring cup does -- the low-fat juices come out first, and only if you
keep pouring without adding anything to the cup do you eventually get to the
fat, when all the juices are gone.  However, if you pour off all the juice
and then stop, the measuring cup is now half-full of just fat.  But then
suppose you add more juice (milk synthesis)?  Even though you add the juice
to the top, it sinks through the fat and/or the fat rises back up to the top
again, and you can once again pour juice off the bottom of the cup with the
spout, and the fat stays there.  I think I like this analogy better.
Whaddya think?
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Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.                         email: [log in to unmask]
Anthropology Department                               phone: (409) 845-5256
Texas A&M University                                    fax: (409) 845-4070
College Station, TX  77843-4352