>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
>Here here Judy!
My spouse is a medico and has always said if I want to be treated as an
equal with other Health Professionals then this is the way to go.
However when we get those hairy problems that won't respond to all the
published stuff, it's good to have some more remedies up one's sleeve!
Also there is a big swing here in Oz towards "alternative" therapies and
alot of mothers expect us LC's to be up with everything, so we tread a fine
line.
I find all the herbal remedies posted on Lactnet very interesting and have
opened a file especially for them.
Regards
Jackie