To the several people who have posted on the spellings, "breastfeeding" and
"breastmilk":

Spelling decisions are commonly "in house". This is particularly so in words
that are in flux, moving from being spelt as two words to a hyphenated word
to a single word.  "Breastfeeding" is such a word, as is "breastmilk". If
you look at older texts, you will find "breastfeeding" spelt as two words.
Later, some publications or authors used two words while others used a
hyphen, and then they progressed to either one word or a hyphen.
"Breastmilk" took longer in this process, even in journals in our field.
The lactation community has pushed to combine the words as they express a
single idea.

To give an example:
When I started writing my first book, Successful Breastfeeding, in 1969
(published in Sydney in 1974), I spelt the word in question with a hyphen,
"breast-feeding", "breast-fed", to show it as one idea.  With the second
edition in 1976, with a new publisher (NMAA, now ABA), this hyphenated
spelling continued in the text - but the cover came out with the term spelt
as two words, "breast feeding"!  Later the in-house spelling policy changed
and in later editions the term was spelt as a single word, "breastfeeding",
both in the text and on the cover.

With my second book, published in 1984, the publisher's spelling policy was
to follow the new Macquarie Dictionary, as an Australian standard.  This
dictionary spells the idea as "breastfeed", etc.  So I spelt it that way in
the typescript, only to have a freelance editor change it to two words all
the way through!  (I had to change all the spelling back to the one-word
form.)

There are numerous other words which have gone through, or are going
through, this process and dictionaries will differ.  ("Heart beat" or
"heartbeat"?)  A few words have even regressed to the 2-word spelling, in
some newspapers' in-house styles, to avoid typing the hyphen.  When I
started school, "to-day" (meaning "this day") was spelt with a hyphen, but
"tomorrow" wasn't. Soon, we had to spell "today" without the hyphen.  In
nineteenth-century editions of Dickens's novels in my mother's bookcase,
"to-morrow" was hyphenated.  English is a living language, and so change is
to be expected. *Usage* is a common cause of changes and persisting with the
one-word spelling - using it a lot - should tip the scales in favour of this
spelling.  Doubtless there will always be publications which are slower to
change their in-house style.

So, in conclusion, differences in spellings occur while words are in a state
of flux, and persistence from authors in discussing the spelling with the
publisher may help change the in-house style.  If enough authors make this
point, it will stick. 

Virginia
In Brisbane, where I am looking out over the park at a flock of two species
of ibis feeding, not the usual bird in my neighbourhood.

On Tue, 30 Mar 2010 Amy Peterson, IBCLC wrote:

When we were writing, I asked our publisher (Hale Publishing) to clarify the
spelling of a few words, and they always write "breastmilk" as one word.
You might show your publisher/editor some sample publications and how they
spell the word.  A little peer pressure.  :) Amy Peterson, IBCLC (Balancing
Breast and Bottle co-author)

Dr Virginia Thorley, OAM, PhD, IBCLC, FILCA 
Brisbane, Qld, Australia 
E: [log in to unmask] 

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