>
>Women typically use only about 2/3 of their total capacity for lactation to
>synthesize enough milk for one baby. Most of us are essentially loafing when
>we're nursing just one, and could easily double milk volume per day with not
>much extra effort.


Yes - we are really not the same as the essentially factory-farmed
dairy cow, who is an artificial animal, with limited parallels to the
human adult lactating female!

Lactation is, by necessity, robust.

Speaking teleologically, it would make no sense for breastfeeding to
be so fragile that it ceased to be effective during times of scarcity
- probably the majority circumstance of human existence was (and
still is, in some places) characterised by occasional times of
plenty, interspersed with times of scarcity.

Our Western bodies have the legacy of this - we are, most of us,
obese, overweight or bigger than we 'need' to be, because we live in
permanent plenty. The result: the fat we put on in this time of
plenty does not 'see us through' the time of scarcity because there
is no time of scarcity!!  Instead, it hangs about our frame, waiting
for the poor harvest that never comes.

According to this, if the poor harvest (for this, read 'slimming
diet') does come, the mother will still survive (bar true starvation)
and so will her nursling.

Nature fixed it that way : )

However, I could be convinced that a mother who treats herself as a
factory-farmed dairy cow, and feeds only at certain times, not at
night, and limits the time aher baby stays at the breast, and
supplements etc etc....she might well find her supply is more fragile.

But it is not the dieting that does it, but the lifestyle.

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK

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