I'm new to Lactnet, so I'll start by introducing myself. My name is Donna Spannaus-Martin. I have a Ph.D. in biochemistry and I am also a medical technologist. I am currently on the faculty at the University of Tennessee, Memphis, teaching clinical laboratory science. A lot of my post-doctoral work involved the nutrition of young children, particularly young children in the WIC program. Although most of the children in my studies were not breastfed, the research group I was in at Iowa State was doing other research that involved breastfeeding, particularly the nutritional status of breastfeeding mothers, and also doing some vitamin A and carotenoid analysis on breastmilk. Most of this work was done in third world countries, where adequate vitamin A status is a problem for both mothers and children. When we were analyzing breastmilk samples, we would always use universal precautions, but the main reason for that was because these areas had a high incidence of both HIV and hepatitis. Also, we were often working with serum and breastmilk samples at the same time, so we already had gloves on anyway. The risk of HIV infection from handling breast milk should be fairly small. The figures that I have seen state that breastmilk from HIV positive mothers contains less than one infectious particle per milliliter, while plasma contains 1-5000 infectious particles per milliliter. As a medical technologist, I have often wondered though, with the panic that the mention of HIV can sometimes start, why there aren't more people concerned with women breastfeeding in public places. I am also very glad that such concerns have not come up since I am currently breastfeeding my four month old son. Just to let you know a little of my breastfeeding experience, My first son is almost three years old now. When he was born, I did not have a lactation consultant to turn to. When my milk came in, my son could not latch on. The LLL leader tried to help, but she had no experience with breast pumps and we couldn't hand express to get the engorgement to down. It took two or three days for me (actually, it was my husband) to finally figure out what I was doing wrong, so in the meantime I started bottle feeding my son the formula that the hospital sent home with me. By the time I got the hang of breast pumping, my son had gotten used to bottles, and I didn't know how to get him back on the breast, so I pumped every three to four hours for the next six months. Even though he was sleeping through the night, I would get up at 2 AM and pump just to make sure my milk supply would keep up. I thought I'd have it all figured out when son #2 came along, but I was wrong. Thankfully, by the time son #2 came along we had moved and the hospital where he was born has a lactation consultant on staff. (I think you people are wonderful!!!) I intend to thank her for her help by letting her know about LactNet. I would love to see more hospitals have a lactation consultant on staff. A year ago, I attended a week long seminar course on infant nutrition, where the main speaker was Dr. Alan Lucas (Nutritional Programming of Long-Term Outcome in Human Infants). After an entire week of hearing about so many of the benefits of breastfeeding, both long-term and short-term, it's hard to imagine anyone not at least trying to breastfeed their child. As one last comment on the daycare issue, the daycares that I have had my sons in, both in Iowa and Tennessee, do where gloves when they change diapers. This has become an important health issue in Memphis with the recent hepatitis outbreak. They even make the kids wash their hands when they first arrive at the daycare before they can enter their classroom. I'm really learning alot from this group, although I wasn't sure what I was getting into when I joined. Although my background and interests may be different from many of yours, I'd be happy to help with questions from my area of expertise, should any come up. Donna Spannaus-Martin -Donna J. Spannaus-Martin, Ph.D., MT (ASCP) Assistant Professor Clinical Laboratory Sciences University of Tennessee, Memphis [log in to unmask]