I'm sorry I didn't save the original posting, as we are kicking around 2
similar threads presently, both having to do with women's hormones -
what is normal when (menopause and menses while BFing). I have been
trying to remeber something I read and finally have it: I read a book
several years ago titled simply "Menstruation." I'm sorry I don't recall
the author. In it, however, she maintained that our current lifestyle of
few children, and less breastfeeding was the major factor in female
cancers and other assorted problems (osteoporosis, etc.) The reason in
her mind was that if women breastfeed *normally* 3-6 years between
pregnancies, then the average woman would have *very few menstrual
periods* in her *lifetime* as both ovulation and menses would be largely
suppressed for years at a time. The primary circulating hormones would
be progesterone during pregnancy and prolactin during lactation, with
estrogen making an occaisional appearance. She maintained that women's
health problems and reproductive cancers may actually be the result of
*overuse* (as it were) of the wrong organs (ovaries vs womb & breast)
and wrong hormonal pathways (menstrual vs pregnancy/lactation)(estrogen
unopposed by progesterone is carcinogenic). This is a very
anthropological view (that the "normal" state is pregnant or lactating),
and although it was strange to read at the time, I find great sense in
this now. Women's bodies were (are) designed to be pregnant and/or
lactating (on a 1:5 year ratio?) during childbearing years - *not*
stressing out month after month in endometrial/estrogen overdrive! Too
bad the physician worried that mom all the more to come up with a plan
to return to a (probably) abnormal state just because her "period hadn't
returned while bfing."

Katharine West, BSN, MPH
Sherman Oaks, CA