Hi all, self appointed reporter here--
You've already recd the message from Linda Pohl et al, who brought her laptop
to the Lactnet mtg, but I was too busy socializing to even realize tthat that
message was going out to all of you, there were a lot of other lactnetters
there bbesides even that long list.
Lactnet highlights today began with Roberta getting up in the plenary session
after Diony Young detailed the outlandish politics that went into the US
adulteration of Baby Friendly; Roberta got up and talked about her experience
with Baby Friendly in Mexico, how it's called Baby and Mother Friendly there,
etc., we hadn't met yet together as Lactnet, and I'm sure I'm not the only
Lactnetter there who had to restrain herself from yelling out Hi Roberta at
her introduction--
Then of course we had this great get together in which we all posed in our
Lactnet shirts, for a bunch of our various cameras; one of those pictures
will be scanned for the lactnet web page, for those of you who have figured
out to access that, you can see all our faces-- there are a lot of us here--
I don't know if anyone counted, but Kathleen Aurbach must at least know how
many tshirts there were; there were also a lot of people who said they were
"lurkers" so we got to meet them too-- there have to be at least 20 or so of
us here? I forgot to ask.  At the get together there were a lot of other
people because there were a lot of people who wanted to get onto Lactnet, and
since we don't know people by face, it was confusing, checking people's
nametags (and I'm bad with names anyway), staring down at that blue tag
hanging around this stranger's neck, and then, dawn of recognition,"Ohhhh,
Yaffa!" and a big hug to your good friend, Yaffa.  Actually I had already had
this experience yesterday on the airplane from Chicago; I had just boarded,
and discovered that the person sitting pehind me was a pediatrician whom I'd
seen at both LLLI conferences, but never spoken to.  so we were introducing
ourselves to each other as the plane was being boarded, and as I said my
name, a woman walling past us in the aisle with all her carryon luggage
turned back and said, "you're Tina Smillie? Hi, I'm Beverly Rae!" and there,
surrounded by all these confused people boarding, we gave each other big
grins about how glad we were to meeet each other--

Final and major Lactnet highlight, which was also just plain highlight of
ILCA period, was James Akre's visionary talk tonight on the "Revolution Still
to Come"-- an empassioned and literate speech; I will have to buy the tape to
listen again-- the climax of the speech was his wonderful and lengthy
quotation from Katherine Dettwyler-- remember her post, quoting from her
book, where she enumerated "I can imagine a day..." (when breastfeeding is
the norm-- e.g., when the surgeon general has rotating messages about the
hazards to infant health, etc etc).

I hope you're reading this Katherine, because we really miss you (and I'm
sorry I never crossed paths with you again in Chicago after that brief mtg in
the lobby), and everybody keeps asking if you're here. You want to post that
"I can imagine a day" again for us? Jim Akre read it in it's entirety, it was
a great climax to his speech and to the day. I wish you could have been
there.

Going very quickly backwards, it is only 12:45 and I am not going to go to
bed real late! (As we posed for the lactnet picture, someone asked, how many
of you have been up til 2 am with Lactnet, and all of us raised our
hands....)

After a great continental breakfast with fresh fruit, etc (trying to make you
feel you're here) our first session was a wonderful presentation by Marshall
Klaus on the rediscovery of the Doula--

Then the next session was Heather Harris presenting her work with using the
mother baby bath at home("rebirthing") as an approach to dealing with
attachment difficulties-- her great video Matt and Mandy, showing a week old
infant relaxed in bath with mom, then placed on her belly, and then, like
Lennart Righard's video, crawling up the breast and sself-attaching in a
matter of minutes, and having then a 40 minute breastfeed, after having been
actually using abm during the previous week because the baby had not
successfully attached-- I had seen part of this video in Chicago-- Lennart
Righard had shown it, so it was great to see it in it's entirety...

Then came Michael Woolridge, (who is a lot younger than I expected (40ish?)
and after I turned to my neighbor with this comment, he said, "and now you're
all saying he sure looks younger than I expected") who spoke on behavioural
aspects of newborns that relate to various learned feeding problems-- he
reminds us that newborns are intelligent human beings with a set of
priorities, and that if something interfering with those priorities happens
to a baby, then, when that aversive stimulus is presented again, or, more
importantly, when some of the other associated stimuli are presented again,
the baby will react to protect himself from this repeated
threat--"conditioned avoidance"
E.g. he had had a baby who had been very aggressively thrust to breast in the
period of first feedings, and that infant became panicky wehnever put to
breast, yet would suck avidly on shoulder, neck, and even forehead.  The baby
associated smell of moms breast, cradle position, etc with previous negative
experience. Solution was found when mom rubbed forehead and face with hand
and then rubbed that smell onto breast, baby attached. Priority list for
babies:
1. I want to breathe. (e.g. If put your hand on the back of my head, you
interfere with my ability to pull back should my nostrils get occluded by the
breast, if you restrict my freedom to pull back, I will push back to make
sure you're out of there before I'm willing to get mynose near that breast)
2. Ingest nutrients sufficient to meet today's daily metabolic needs.
3. Avoid pain/discomfort
4. Free control over feeding
5. Ingestion of sufficient nutrients to satisfy requirements for *growth*

Since this last, req for growth, is different and lower priority than req for
today's metabolic needs, this priotity list can explain why some infants,
trying to maintain higher priorities in the face of aversive memories, may
demonstrate such behavior as "content to starve."

Then Diony Young on BFHI and BfHI and all that horrible politics, bottom
line-- Speak out!

Then our lactnet party; and plenty of time for, exhibits, bookstore, dinner
and/or swim-- not as tight as LLLI conference.

After dinner Jim Akre's erudite and down to earth speech ("Hi, I'm Jim Akre,
and I'll be your server tonight") serving us up "nutritional food for
thought", and K.Dettwyler's vision;

And then, ILCA birthday party shmoozing by the pool-- refreshments and
socializing.

So far, today was all plenary sessions, so no conflicts. Tomorrow we'll have
a couple breakouts; maybe Linda Pohl or others can give perspecitives on
other sessions and broaden this beyond my narrow scope...

G'night folks.

Tina