Chris' posts are right at the heart of what I and most hospital and
WIC-based LCs deal with every day: the majority of moms who feel they can't
or don't wish to, for whatever of many reasons, commit to full breast- or
breastmilk-feeding. The standard >80/20-80/<20 categorization for partial
bfdg certainly does allow for researchers to address the situations of "1-2
bottles of formula/day" and "1-2 breastfeedings/day". I do wonder about the
large 20-80 category, if there might be clinically relevant subdivisions.
Seems we'd need to try out some subdivisions in order to capture that
information. Bet whether 1-2 bottles/day leads to weaning for a particular
mother-baby pair has to do with mom's storage capacity as well as baby's
preferences for flow or other characteristics of the bottle or whatever type
of feeder relative to breast. Wish someone could discover a magic-bullet
"feeding behaviors inventory" or some other marker to identify individual
babies who would be at high risk for weaning if introduced to bottle. Then
again, we already know that most babies are at risk if introduced to
bottles. Still the dynamics of it would be fascinating to know.
Thanks for your helpful and thought-provoking posts!
Ann Lown, Santa Fe, NM

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html