I was discussing with another ressource person for Allaitement Québec (bf support group here in Québec), and we were wondering about antibody levels in milk. We had been told by our local IBCLC that the mature milk antibody levels are lower than colostrum levels per unit measure, but that as a child ages and weans gradually, the child gets the same number of antibodies at, say, 2 years (while perhaps only nursing 3 times a day or whatever) that s/he got as a 2 week old baby. I've heard this before, so don't really doubt it, but we were wondering what is the deciding factor in the amount of antibodies that gets put into the mature milk? We had first understood that it was to do with weaning, i.e. the number of times a baby nurses in 24 hours, but as we were discussing we saw some flaws in this idea. Namely that if it were true, a mom of a 2 month old baby could cut her baby down to 1 or 2 nursing times per day, and bottle feed formula the rest of the time, believing that her milk would be more concentrated in antibodies because she was nursing fewer times per day. I suspect personally that it is much more complicated than that, but may take in account at least 3 factors that I can think of off the top of my head: 1) length of time since delivery of the baby 2) stage in weaning (i.e. how many times does he nurse per day) and 3) exposure to microbes in the mom, i.e. a toddler is mouthing more things, is perhaps being cared for by other people more, and in a daycare sometimes, is bringing home more germs, and therefore inciting her body to produce more antibodies...and in this way, the mom who is nursing non-twins (tandeming) would produce more antibodies in response to the toddler's active participation of germs than she would have been when he (toddler) was a newborn and was not bringing home so many germs! Is there doccumentation out there to do with this subject? Does anyone know for sure how the antibody levels go up and down, or do we just know certain parts to the equation right now? Do any of these aforementioned things have to do with antibody production by the mother, or is it a totally different system than what I've just proposed? Thanks in advance! Fio personne ressource for Allaitement Québec Mommy to Sandrine Leïlou, 13/03/00, bf. *********************************************** 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