>Moreover, in India again, ayurvedic doctors suggest
>putting a drop of honey on one's finger and giving it to the baby to suck
>and indulge the taste of sucking.

What about the risks of botulism poisoning from honey??

>To my knowing, colostrum lasts for two or three days, then is replaced by
>milk, whether the stimulation of the breast happens immediately after birth
>or one or two days later.

Colostrum vs. mature milk is an artificial division.  If you look at
expressed breast milk from the first weeks of life, you see a GRADUAL change
in the color and texture of the milk over the first two to three WEEKS, not
days.  Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the secretions of the breast
are 100% colostrum in the first day and are 100% fully mature milk by 3
weeks, with a gradual switch in-between.  It is not accurate to say that
colostrum is "replaced by milk" when the milk "comes in" for the first time.

> When you give a few spoons of water
>with drops of lemon, honey or milk as most Indian rural women do, you
>provide her with a small quantity of foreign food carrying microbes to the
>intestines, which in turn induce the vitamin K that will protect the baby
>against any haemorrhage incident.

I can't comment on this theory about vitamin K production, but I can comment
that with water, milk or foreign food you may get bacteria, viruses,
parasites, and lots of other bad stuff.

So, what about the RESEARCH showing that babies of unmedicated labors, when
placed on their mother's abdomen, crawl up and latch on spontaneously within
an hour after birth?  Are we to assume that these are all at one end of the
spectrum?

A lot of this sounds like voodoo-speak to me.  I apologize in advance for
those I will no doubt offend with that comment.

Kathy Dettwyler

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