>Turns out I know this physician well, she has already investigated other
>possible causes for this child's neutropenia and ruled out most.  The baby
>is responding to Neupogen but at very high doses.  She feels that the risks
>of continuing this therapy as well as the risks of neutropenia out weigh the
>beneficial effects of continued breastfeeding.

Okay, going out on a very thin limb here and hoping for  a little company:

Am I right in assuming that if an HIV positive person were placed, on
diagnosis, in absolute isolation, life expectancy would be theoretically
normal because there'd be no infective organisms for his compromised immune
system to confront?

So.  There's a sure-fire way to avoid AIDS.  Yet we don't use it, because
life in isolation runs absolutely counter to the normal human experience
and is an unthinkable degradation of a person's quality of life.

We tend to focus all our attention on the medical "benefits" of
breastfeeding (never mind for the moment that they aren't even benefits;
they were always meant to be a given).  What does it mean when a person is
deprived of the normal span of his or her breastfeeding relationship?

Well, the vast majority of us were thus deprived.  No big deal.  On the
other hand, we live in a country where the fabric of family life is
disintegrating, where depression and insecurity are commonplace, problems
with relationships are the rule, and so on.  Of course we don't know
whether there's a connection.  All we know for sure is that the great
majority of Americans were deprived of the first and one of the closest
relationships humans ever have.  We don't have the research to put a cost
on that deprivation.  But we sure know it's a gross aberration of normal.

When I think of how my relationship with my children would have changed if
they had been forced to wean completely at 4 months, I shudder.  I think
all our family dynamics were cemented in those early nursing years.  At the
time, I might have acquiesced - albeit sadly - if Almighty Medicine had
told me I had to wean.  Now... I'd want Almighty Medicine to give me some
almighty good reasons, and I wouldn't want them to be based on speculation.

Is the limb breaking yet?

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY