Sarah Barnett wrote, re starting solids:

>     Despite any emotional preferences I also have always wanted
>hard, researched facts before sharing many things with mothers.
>It has always surprised me how long I have had to wait for
>confirmation of many widely held beliefs.

I, too, want objective, scientific data on which to base my suggestions to
mothers, re any breastfeeding topic.  There is certainly a place for "gut
feelings," instinct, and intuition, but, we can't fall back on ritual and
"what everybody knows is true" as a foundation for practice.   If lactation
consultants want to be respected, and, more importantly, heeded by physicians
and other health professionals, we've got to have solid data to back us up.
 If what we're saying is indeed true, there is surely some physiologic or
statistical basis for it which can be quantified, measured, whatever.  We
need to use instinct, folklore, anecdotal evidence as a starting point and
procede from there to objective proof if we want to be taken seriously. At
least, that's what my gut feeling tells me.  :-)   (That's a smiley, for
those of you not familiar with computerese .  In this case, it means, "I
don't take myelf as seriously as the preceding statement might indicate." )

Judy D in WV