Hello everyone.  This is my last comment on the 4-6 month issue.  Please try
to remember that the WHO recommendations are written to apply to all
children all over the world.  In places where mothers are not well nourished
and not in good health themselves, their children do not get sufficient
nutrition from breast milk to grow properly beginning at about 4 months
(some places the decline starts earlier, some places later, some kids falter
from the very beginning, some kids do fine).  In some cases, the children
grow OK until 4 months or even longer but only at the expense of the
mother's health and nutritional status.  Anyone who has had experience
working in rural areas of the Third World knows that these women lead
extremely physically exhausting lives.  In Mali, the women rise before dawn
to pound millet, chop firewood, haul water, cook food, clean the compound,
etc. and then go work in the fields all day.  They spend most of their adult
lives either pregnant or lactating, without the benefit of modern medicine.
They see their children succumb to illnesses they can't control (diptheria,
polio, measles, malaria, and on and on).  One woman I knew in Mali had a 3
month old who was "failing to thrive" at the breast and after much
interviewing and examining and probing we decided that the basic problem was
the mother's terrible asthma, complicated by the Harmattan (as Judy
described for Israel by another name, hot dry wind blowing off the Sahara
filling the air with dust so think you couldn't see the sun).  The mother
was too sick to be producing sufficient milk for her infant, but her
cultural beliefs also said no solids until 8-10 months.  The baby was
malnourished and dehydrated.

The point, before I lose it, is that 4 months is entirely appropriate for
supplmenting infants with solid foods (semi-solid, whatever) under these
conditions, provided that the supplemental foods are *clean and appropriate*
-- which is also part of the WHO recommendations.  If they aren't, then it's
probably a toss up on whether it is better to add solids or delay them.  In
this baby's case (descrbied above) it would have died without supplementation.

Final note: the UNICEF claim that WHO was changing their recommendation from
"4-6 months" to "about 6 months" was a MISINTERPRETATION.  The WHO never
made this change.
Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.
e-mail to [log in to unmask]
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Texas A&M University
Specialist in infant feeding and growth