I am interested in Cathy Fetherston's comments about the higher
concentrations of immune factors in women with oversupply (or at least the
perception of oversupply).  In cattle, experimentally induced mastitis
increases milk flow rate by 25%.  Could the women's immune factor increases
be attempts to manage low-grade mastitis that has artificially increased
their milk supplies?  So maybe high flow rates and over-abundant milk supply
are a sign rather than a cause of mastitis in some women.

Something else I've thought about:  a fair percentage of pregnancies start
out with two eggs (i.e. twins) and only one egg survives to term.  If memory
serves, this happens really frequently.  I've worked with some mothers
several times who had dramatic over-supply problems with one but not a
subsequent baby.  There has not been a notable pattern in these cases.  One
mother I saw with all three babies.  She had terrible oversupply with babies
#1 and 2, but not with baby #3.  Other mothers I've seen have worse problems
with engorgement and oversupply with each subsequent pregnancy (see Humenick
and Hill's research on engorgement being slightly more intense as parity
increases.)  So I wonder if maybe another factor that might influence
production of SIgA, etc, would be a body that perhaps had been hormonally
'primed' to expect more than one infant.  I don't know if it would do any
good to ask these over-producing mothers if they have a family hx of twins,
or if there is any way to tell if someone is initially preg. with twins.
Does anyone know what the science is behind that claim that a lot of
pregnancies start out as twin pregs?


Barbara Wilson-Clay BSEd, IBCLC
Austin Lactation Associates
http://www.lactnews.com

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