In my travels around the world, I have been privileged to observe lots of
mothers and babies. The thing that struck me most clearly when I was in
South Africa and Kenya, in particular, was how thin the mothers were who
had the biggest, most roly-poly babies--at 4 mo, 6 mo, 9 mo, 12 mo, 2 yrs,
etc.  These children were breastfeeding (most of them through 12 months
pretty exclusively so or with tastes of food but not huge meals of same).
These women breastfed as their culture told them to and their babies were
quite healthy.  The mothers were thin for many possible reasons: the food
they ate may have had fewer calories than we might have thought
appropriate, they did a lot of other work that kept them using the energy
they did take in, genetic predisposition to that body type, etc.  Who
knows?

Breastfed children, fed as they need to be fed, grow as they are programmed
to grow (which--in some cases--means putting on lots and lots of weight
early and literally growing into it.)

One of my favorite pictures on my "Breastfeeding babies gallery" in my
private office is a little guy who weighed in at birth at 9 lbs; by 2
months, he was 20 lbs [he doubled his weight in less than half the time
anticipated]; at 6 months, he was 26 lbs, and at 12 months, 28 lbs. (this
was bigger than my son at age 3!).  This child literally grew into all the
weight he put on earlier.  The pictures show him very jowly with lots of
rolls at 2 months and progressively "slimmer looking" with each subsequent
picture.  He walked at the same time my son did  (14 months).

     mailto:[log in to unmask]

"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly
disguised as impossible situations."
Kathleen G. Auerbach,PhD, IBCLC (Ferndale, WA USA) [log in to unmask]
WEB PAGE: http://www.telcomplus.net/kga/lactation.htm
LACTNET archives http://library.ummed.edu/lsv/archives/lactnet.html