I think we are talking about two different meanings of the phrase "the period
of exclusive breastfeeding."

Magda, you are of course correct that in one important sense anything by
mouth other than mom's breast ends the period of exclusive breastfeeding.  As
Rachel says, a few drops of infant Tylenol during teething do this, too.   In
this case, of babies after their traditional Jewish ritual circumcisions on
day 8, they are normally getting a piece of gauze, the end corner of which is
dipped into sweet wine and given the baby to suck.  In other words, probably
around 1cc, given exactly once -- less of a challenge to the gut mucosa,
probably, than that tylenol every 6 hours.

So I think that, yes, the non-exclusiveness of the breastfeeding here is
interesting from a technical perspective on gut integrity, etc -- since how
much do we really know about whether this quantity of anything does anything
to the gut?  maybe it does lots, who knows, and we do indeed tend to forget
about it, as I think Magda was trying to point out.  If I were, say, dealing
with an HIV-positive mom who wanted to bf, and I were thinking about the
Coutsoudis study results, I might well not want to give even drops of
anything at all but mom's milk.   (do we circumcise those kids?  I don't
know)

But from other, more sociological perspectives on what constitutes "the
period of exclusive breastfeeding," I don't think it has a lot of impact on
other feeding habits in this population --as you could probably tell from
Norma's exasperation, it's conceptualized as an element of ritual, not an
element of feeding.  Aside from this drop -- literally, drops -- of wine,
these babies (and their sisters) are as likely to be exclusively breastfed as
other babies of their socioeconomic stratum -- in the US, that pretty much
matches the Ross numbers for college educated moms, I'd guess.

Elisheva Urbas
I have all daughters, but yup, they did get that occasional tylenol
and now at 6 mos Yemima is very into massaging pumkin puree into her scalp,
if not actually swallowing it

             ***********************************************
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