On an historical note - When I was a student nurse at a prestigious New
York City medical center in the mid-1960's, our infant patients were fed
evaporated milk.  According to my lecture notes, solid foods were to be
started at 1 month of age.  Orange juice was introduced at 2-3 weeks, egg
yolks by 3-5 months.  We were taught that by 6 months of age a baby needed
to have become familiar with the whole range of tastes and textures of all
foods, or would never learn to eat properly afterwards.  Six months was the
age to wean from pureed to chopped foods.  So we dutifully persisted in
spooning the baby food back into the little mouths as quickly as it was
spit out.  I shudder to think of the wasted time and effort, the emotional
damage to the babies, and the allergies we may have unwittingly
precipitated.

I also remember that on an OB ward of about 32 beds, only one new mother
made any attempt to breastfeed.  The curtains were drawn around her bed for
the feedings.  The rule was, no feeding for any baby for 12 hours, then
water in a bottle to be sure there was no esophageal atresia present, then
a schedule of a few minutes per breast every 4 hours.  I quote from the
patient care booklet (which I still have, so I am not remembering this
wrong!):

"...In order to accustom your nipples to nursing, the feeding periods are
gradually lengthened.  Let your baby nurse 5 minutes at each feeding period
the first three days; 10 minutes the following three days; and 15 to 20
minutes thereafter.  The screens are drawn back to make it possible for you
to see the clock and time the period of actual sucking.  The usual plan is
to use one breast at a feeding, alternating so that each breast is nursed
every eight hours.  In 8 or 10 minutes the baby will obtain all the milk he
is going to get, but he needs the rest of the time for satisfaction from
sucking...."

We were taught that beer was good for increasing a mother's milk supply,
and that smoking posed no harm to a nursing baby.  Breasts were bound up in
a binder during the period of engorgement.  Nipples were washed with soap
and water.

Karen Pryor's book, "Nursing Your Baby," was already out, and I read it
with great interest, wondering why there were so many differences between
her advice and the hospital's protocols.

I wonder which of the pieces of advice we give today will seem equally as
ineffective or detrimental to us 30 years from now?  I hope we will be
increasingly able to document that the suggestions we give do really work.
In addition, I hope all of us are better able to use our common sense these
days.  If the baby spits it out, there is probably a good reason.  Nature
has evolved a good system over thousands of years, and it is clear to me
now that 1 month old babies were never meant to eat cereal, vegetables and
fruit.  As a student nurse I suspected that, but wasn't confident enough to
challenge my teachers any further.  I was already in enough trouble by then
with the other questions I raised, like why fathers were banned from the
delivery room.

Anne Altshuler, RN, MS, IBCLC and LLL Leader in Madison, WI