I'm new to Lactnet, so I'll start by introducing myself. My name is Donna
Spannaus-Martin. I have a Ph.D. in biochemistry and I am also a medical
technologist. I am currently on the faculty at the University of Tennessee,
Memphis, teaching clinical laboratory science. A lot of my post-doctoral
work involved the nutrition of young children, particularly young children
in the WIC program. Although most of the children in my studies were not
breastfed, the research group I was in at Iowa State was doing other
research that involved breastfeeding, particularly the nutritional status
of breastfeeding mothers, and also doing some vitamin A and carotenoid
analysis on breastmilk. Most of this work was done in third world
countries, where adequate vitamin A status is a problem for both mothers
and children. When we were analyzing breastmilk samples, we would always
use universal precautions, but the main reason for that was because these
areas had a high incidence of both HIV and hepatitis. Also, we were often
working with serum and breastmilk samples at the same time, so we already
had gloves on anyway.

The risk of HIV infection from handling breast milk should be fairly small.
The figures that I have seen state that breastmilk from HIV positive
mothers contains less than one infectious particle per milliliter, while
plasma contains 1-5000 infectious particles per milliliter. As a medical
technologist, I have often wondered though, with the panic that the mention
of HIV can sometimes start, why there aren't more people concerned with
women breastfeeding in public places. I am also very glad that such
concerns have not come up since I am currently breastfeeding my four month
old son.

Just to let you know a little of my breastfeeding experience, My first son
is almost three years old now. When he was born, I did not have a lactation
consultant to turn to. When my milk came in, my son could not latch on. The
LLL leader tried to help, but she had no experience with breast pumps and
we couldn't hand express to get the engorgement to down. It took two or
three days for me (actually, it was my husband) to finally figure out what
I was doing wrong, so in the meantime I started bottle feeding my son the
formula that the hospital sent home with me. By the time I got the hang of
breast pumping, my son had gotten used to bottles, and I didn't know how to
get him back on the breast, so I pumped every three to four hours for the
next six months. Even though he was sleeping through the night, I would get
up at 2 AM and pump just to make sure my milk supply would keep up. I
thought I'd have it all figured out when son #2 came along, but I was
wrong. Thankfully, by the time son #2 came along we had moved and the
hospital where he was born has a lactation consultant on staff. (I think
you people are wonderful!!!) I intend to thank her for her help by letting
her know about LactNet. I would love to see more hospitals have a lactation
consultant on staff.

A year ago, I attended a week long seminar course on infant nutrition,
where the main speaker was Dr. Alan Lucas (Nutritional Programming of
Long-Term Outcome in Human Infants).  After an entire week of hearing about
so many of the benefits of breastfeeding, both long-term and short-term,
it's hard to imagine anyone not at least trying to breastfeed their child.

As one last comment on the daycare issue, the daycares that I have had my
sons in, both in Iowa and Tennessee, do where gloves when they change
diapers. This has become an important health issue in Memphis with the
recent hepatitis outbreak. They even make the kids wash their hands when
they first arrive at the daycare before they can enter their classroom.

I'm really learning alot from this group, although I wasn't sure what I was
getting into when I joined. Although my background and interests may be
different from many of yours, I'd be happy to help with questions from my
area of expertise, should any come up.

Donna Spannaus-Martin




-Donna J. Spannaus-Martin, Ph.D., MT (ASCP)
 Assistant Professor
 Clinical Laboratory Sciences
 University of Tennessee, Memphis
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