I just finished reading _The Ramsay Scallop_ by Frances Temple (a "young
adult" novel) and I really enjoyed it.  The plot: it is 1300, and fourteen
year old Elenor is an orphan who is terrified of marriage.  She has been
betrothed since childhood to Thomas, who has returned from the Crusades a
bitter and disillusioned man.  It looks like their union is doomed to end in
life-long misery for both, when the village priest takes pity on them and
sends the pair on a religious pilgrimage from England to Spain to atone for
the sins of their village.  The priest's hidden agenda: he hopes the two will
find peace of mind and love for one another during the course of their
journey.  The two see many wonderful sights, meet many interesting people
(including a breastfeeding mother), and have quite a few adventures, but the
passage that made my day is on pages 258-259:

"Don't you want to have many babies, you and Thomas?"....

Elenor swallowed.  She was very thirsty.  "Maybe just one," she said
hoarsely.  "But you can never have just one, can you?

"Well," said Bea, "maybe and maybe not."  What a child this English girl was!
 Didn't she know anything?  "But if you're lucky and want to, you can take a
good long rest between each of them."

"Can you really?  And for how long?"  Elenor had never known anyone whom she
had thought to ask these questions.

"Oh, two years, anyway.  You just keep nursing the first one, and like as
not, you won't get another until you stop."

Elenor laughed.  She knew about milk cows.  Why hadn't she guessed it would
be true of women too?  What foolishness it seemed that ladies put their
babies out to nurse with wet nurses and then died of too many births too
close together!  Suddenly the day seemed very beautiful."

Wow...positive, accurate breastfeeding information in a novel for the
teenaged set!

Rita
LLL of Menlo Park/Palo Alto, California