I want to toss my .02 in on this discussion:

>>> Q4. Does the "quality" of the milk degrade as nursing continues, and if
>>> so, how long does it take?
>>
>>No, it does not degrade.
>
>I thought it did. I thought that that was why milk-producing animals
>have to have young every couple of years, in order to keep their milk
>production up. Or is that because they are effectively "pumping"? In the
>old days, could a wet nurse continue nourishing one baby after another,
>without having one of her own?

There is no research to show that the QUALITY of the milk "degrades" in any
way.

There is no research at all on the composition of human breast milk after 2
years post-partum.

There is no research to show how long a woman could keep producing milk
after one child without having another baby.  But this is a QUANTITY
question, not a QUALITY question.

There is research (mine) to suggest that 5-6-7 years is the normal duration
of breastfeeding for humans as a species, so under traditional circumstances
(hunting and gathering) one would expect that women could continue to make
milk for 5-6-7 years IF the child was still nursing often enough to maintain
production.

In the "wild" cows have a new baby every year, and modern dairy cows will
not keep producing milk for the machine forever -- they have to have another
calf every so often (every year??) in order to keep their QUANTITY up.

As population groups, children's average growth will start to falter if they
are not given safe and nutritionally adequate supplements to breast milk by
4-6 months of age (4 months in developing countries, 6 months in developed
countries).  This is where the WHO recommendations come from about when to
add solids to breast milk.  The averages in no way dictate the experience of
individual children -- any more than an average US female height of 5'6" has
anything to do with my being 5'8" or Betty Crase being 5'0"!!

INDIVIDUAL children may do fine on breast milk alone for a year or longer,
while other INDIVIDUAL children may need to have solids started earlier than
4-6 months.

It is important for clinicians (including LCs and LLLLs) working with
individual situations to try to determine whether the child is eating a
little, but just not much, in the way of solids (lots of parents have
unrealistic expectations of how much a one or two year old should eat, and
may not be accurately judging how much actually goes in), or whether the
child is actively averse to having food in its mouth, gags on solids, never
mouths toys or hands, etc.  Feeding problems can be "all in the parent's
head" or they can be signs of a child who is allergic, or who has oral-motor
problems (swallowing disorders, hypersensitive gag reflex, etc.) or who has
neurological problems (autism, mental retardation, etc.).  There is quite a
bit of discussion of this in the archives.

Kathy Dettwyler

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