I really enjoyed Kathy Dettwyler's elucidating and reasoned post about
childhood illnesses and the role of human milk in mediating the early
exposure to pathogens.  I found the image of the children in Mali eating
donkey manure amusing.  It recalled my toddler's early "diets" which all too
often consisted of cat chow, garden snails, and on one memorable occasion,
rabbit poop.  Living in a warm climate here in Texas  we are without the
annual kill-offs of critters enjoyed by the folks from the North..  We
were/are a family that always had pets and sandboxes and camping trips going
on.  Between eating dirt and drinking creek water, one of my kids or another
had parasites prob. once a year until they got old enough to quit putting
wierd stuff in their mouths. But hey, they had a bang-up time.  I made my
oldest daughter a nervous wreck by dogging her around trying to take stuff
out of her mouth until a League Leader friend told me to ease up.  It's how
they learn to tell food from non-food, she told me.  She was my version of
the laughing Mali mammas. So I just counted on the protection from sustained
breastfeeding to keep them reasonably healthy, and was grateful for
heavier-duty antibiotics and vaccines that protected them from wasting
disease and death.

Barbara Wilson-Clay BSEd, IBCLC
Austin Lactation Associates
http://www.lactnews.com

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