In many cultures, babies are not allowed to breastfeed during the first day
or two or three.  I'm not so sure that anyone has shown that this means they
don't get the colostrum, however.  It doesn't, after all, go away, it just
gets diluted by mature milk coming in behind so it doesn't look quite so
yellow.  In 1985 I had a son who had to be in neo-natal intensive care for
three weeks at a big children's hospital.  They had a lovely pumping room
for the moms, and there were 8 of us who used to sit around two card tables,
pumping and discussing our babies and their problems (mine had Down Syndrome
and had to have intestinal surgery, but is turning 10 tomorrow and can read,
write, add and subtract, and talks-talks-talks all the time).  For those
babies who were still on IVs, including mine, we stored our milk in
disposable bottles in the intensive care refrigerator, according to date of
pumping.  That way, once the babies could take milk by tube or mouth, they
got the milk in the order that it came out of the mother.  One thing I
noticed that was clearly evident in everyone's milk, not just mine, was that
the color changed ever so slightly from day to day during those three weeks.
It was not at all a case of "now we have colostrum, now we have mature
milk."  Everyone's milk started out ranging from flaming flourescent orange
to bright yellow and ever so gradually faded to lighter yellow, cream, and
finally pale blue.  Thus, I suggest that with your Mexican mothers you do
what you can to convince them that colostrum is good, but not worry about it
too much, and the babies ARE still getting most of the colostrum, even after
the mature milk comes in.  I looked at all the research on colostrum in
1987-88 and didn't find anyone really looking at milk composition this way,
but maybe someone has since then.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
Katherine A. Dettwyler                                email:
[log in to unmask]
Anthropology Department                               phone: (409) 845-5256
Texas A&M University                                    fax: (409) 845-4070
College Station, TX  77843-4352