To Beth Collins:
    "Mother's milk tea" can mean many things, depending on place, manufacturer, and so on.  What concerns me is that they are *blends* and so the mother is not ingesting just one herbal medication.  Several years ago Rosti et al reported two cases, in Italy, of mothers whose breastfeeding was dramatically undermined by taking copious amounts of a "mother's milk tea".  It made the babies two lethargic to feed, and they only recovered when it cleared their systems.  The two references, below, are for the Rosti article and my short discussion of the four ingredients of the tea (with further references):
  
1. Rosti L, Nardini A, Bettinelli ME, at al. Toxic effects of a herbal tea mixture in two mewborns. Acta Paediatrica 1994; 83:683.
2. Thorley V. (letter) Breastfeeding Review 1996: 4(2):82.

    Isn't it more important to educate and encourage mothers and their support persons that good brestfeeding management will do more for their supplies than these teas?  (Yes, I know, that takes time, they need the placebo effect of doing smething they believe in, etc, etc ....)
                     Virginia
                     In cloudy Brisbnae, Queensland
          ( o )( o )
            This is not a substitute.
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