Thought you guys might get a kick out of this.  It's from a book called
"White Mother in Africa" that was published in 1939.  It's about a 19 year
old woman from Missouri who heads off, in 1922, to Portuguese Angola, with
her husband, who is a diamond mining engineer.  They have a baby about 7
months after they arrive.  She actually talks quite a bit about
breastfeeding.  It's an *odd* book, to say the least, extremely racist, even
for the time, it seems to me.


p. 103 "The baby was named Eric, my husband's choice for a boy.  I found
that I could nurse him, as I had planned.  Mrs. Cook stayed for a few
days......"

p. 108  She's in a car going home from the town where she had the baby to
her house way out in the boonies.  "On and on we traveled; the feeding time
for my baby had long passed.  He was sleeping and not aware of it, but I was
becoming more uncomfortable with every passing moment and more miserable
from embarrassment at the thought that I would have to explain all this to
Mr. Reiley, who knew nothing about Nature's ability to provide abundant and
regular supplies of nourishment for the very young.  But we drove steadily
on until I could bear the discomfiture no longer and said very reluctantly
and almost tearfully, "Mr. Reilly, I'm so sorry, but I must stop and feed my
baby -- I -- I'm accustomed to feeding him every three hours and I'm very
uncomfortable.  He was definitely astonished and also somewhat embarrassed,
I think, for he almost fell out of the car and disappeared in the village
where we drew up.  Albert handed me the baby, who awoke and partook of the
biggest meal of his life."

p. 124  A friend is visiting when the baby is three months old.  "I was
overcoming the malaria that had been preying on my weakness since my baby
had been born; nevertheless, I was losing weight steadily, due to feeding my
big fellow and soon I became a pale-faced skeleton.  "You're going to stop
feeding this child," Mr. Osborne informed me one day.  He was a fatherly
sort of a person, having had experience with his own family now in the
States.  "But what shall I give him?" I replied in dismay.  "We have nothing
but canned milk."  "I'll send to South Africa for some cows for you.  In a
few months we'll have an African dairy for this young man," he declared.


p. 134, the baby was born in late fall and it's now April and he's still
nursing, but he comes down with dysentery and becomes so ill he won't nurse.

"But I had loved him with all my being since the moment he was born and now
as I saw him growing weaker, refusing all food, my heart grew heavier, my
fear greater.  And I was faced with another real problem, the torment of
which stands out like a dark spot in my memory.  Nature had continued to
supply me with abundant sustenance for my child, but now, with my baby ill,
there was no demand for the supply.  After the first long day and second
longer day, I was in real physical agony.  Any sort of relief-giving pump
apparatus could be purchased at any drugstore in the States, but it was not
to be hoped for in the depths of the jungle.  Art saw the pain in my eyes,
in my every movement on the third morning and said with tight lips, "I'll
get a native baby for you.  I'll send my assistant, Sando, to the village
for one right away."  Ordinarily, the thought of nursing a naked,
not-too-clean native child would have been repellant.  Now I welcomed it.
Anything, anything to rid myself of these two painful rocklike lumps that
were fast becoming a part of my body.  I simply could not allow myself to
become ill for I had to care for my child."

There's a long exchange between her and the assistant while he tries to
explain that all the babies in the village "have a headache" and so none can
be sent to nurse from her to relieve her engorgement!

"Now for the first time, I, a white mother in Africa, was afraid for my
life.  After a few hours, fever came upon me, and the whole of my body above
the waist was bursting with pain, was becoming more rocklike with every
passing moment.  I was aware that infection of any sort in this hot,
germ-ridden country was not easy to overcome.  I saw that my baby, after
drinking some rice water, had fallen asleep, so I left his side and walked
to the veranda like a blind, decrepit old woman.  Blind with fever and pain,
decrepit since every tiny movement meant more pain.  I managed to sit down
in a large wicker chair and unconsciously turned my eyes toward the little
gray-ribbon path that led to the mine, the same sort of pather that I had
watched for nearly two years for the love of my life, who never failed to
come.  And there he was!  Coming with eager, hurried steps.  I could not see
plainly.  I could not see clearly.  But I knew that he would find a
way....Within a short time I was looking into the contents of a white pan,
seeing the bluish-white liquid that Nature had provided to promote life--and
that in this ironical instance had set about to destroy life."

So, she never tells exactly *what* it was her husband did to help her  ;(
One has to wonder why he didn't just help her directly.  Guess it never
occurred to them.

They take the baby off to a doctor and he eventually recovers.

p. 147, describing the trip back home with the recovering baby "We were a
happy, reunited family again.  I sat on the settee beside Art while he held
the baby, all wakefulness now.  This little fellow was not entirely rid of
dysentery and would not be for months but was apparently well and gaining
weight.  I had been using powdered milk for his food but found that Mr.
Osborne had kept his promise, and we now had about a dozen cows with horns
so long and natures so wild that the milkman and keeper who came with them
had to put them ina small, strong pen and tie their legs tightly together,
and their horns, before he dared to milk them.  Each cow gave only a small
amount of milk because the grass was high and tough, not tender and green.
But we boiled the milk for Chuffi-Chuffi (the baby) and he began to thrive
on it."

So, apparently she became engorged, figured out how to relieve the
engorgement, then *weaned her baby* when he had dysentery, and switched to
powdered milk and then plain boiled cows' milk.  It's truly a wonder he
survived!!!

p. 176  She's describing how the African women do all the work of field and
home and their husband's just sit around doing nothing.  "Sometimes, if a
wife had to make a long trek through the grasses or had to carry a heavy
load, the husband would grudgingly consent to keep the baby.  And this
latest offspring usually whiled away its time by sucking and tugging away at
the half-formed nipples of the father's breasts--and thus did not interfere
with the all-important sitting career of the male parent."


They leave Africa when the child is about 14 months old, and she doesn't
mention nursing again.

Anyway, that's my literary tidbit of the day.

Thanks to all who answered my Depo-Provera question.  The answer seems to be
"Sometimes" or "It depends".  But that it definitely can have an effect in
some women.

Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
Texas A&M University