>I always wonder about "medication" -- herbal, homeopathic or
>conventional -- before an infant is consuming foods. I know that,
>optimally, an exclusively breastfed infant would be exactly that, and
>get nothing else at all. I always hope my baby won't be sick enough to
>need tylenol before 6 mos. or so, and take the homeopathics myself. I
>know homeopathics are safe, but it just seems to me that anything but
>breastmilk should be avoided. What do others think?
>
Jo-Ann, I have pondered this question often.  Being one who focuses on
yeast overgrowth in infants and mothers, I urge the mothers to get
treatment for themselves and their infants, knowing all the while that this
will affect the infant's gut. But her gut is already "damaged" by the yeast
overgrowth, probably caused by antibiotics, which began the damage. So I am
not looking at a pristine newborn breastfed infant's gut.

I know from experience that if we don't get adequate treatment for this
infant's thrush and mother's yeasty nipples, this little one will *not* go
on to have a healthy, exclusively breastfed gut. She will have a gut that
must assimilate nutrients from the formula that her mother will substitute
for breastmilk, because breastfeeding with thrush/yeast is just too painful.

I think of pouring Nystatin, Diflucan, Gentian Violet into this baby's GI
tract and I shudder. But the mis-treatment has already ocurred and we must
do everything that we can to preserve breastfeeding. Hopefully after the
yeast treatments have resolved the overgrowth problem, this baby's gut will
be restored to its deserved health.

But what of studies involving "exclusively breastfed infants"?  Must we
consider these foreign substances in looking at the negative effects of
artificial feedings as opposed to the normal way of feeding? Will an infant
who battled thrush from mouth to anus be able to recover and go on to have
the intestinal health that is meant to protect her for a lifetime?

Dr.Gartner says that even 1 teaspoon of pears will negatively affect a
breastfed infant's gut. But after 2 weeks of just breastmilk the
environment will be restored to health. So I am hoping that this will be
the case with all of my clients' babies who are on all sorts of
gunk--temporarily (as opposed to on-going vitamins ACD that are now being
ordered in the US).

Pat Gima, IBCLC
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
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