Dear Barb,

Well, you took the words right out of my mouth.  Have been wondering about this for a long while and this latest thread has renewed my questions.  One only needs to visit a cemetary to see the number of women lost in childbirth and babies that never made it very far.  I also have witnessed a fair amount of failure in the animal populations I have had contact with.  Kathy D. has indicated that she rarely saw lactation failure in Mali (I hope I am correct in this) either on mom or baby's side, but saw lots of morbidity and mortality from common diseases.  Do we have any data from other populations which would seem to reflect statistics untainted by what we would term as "modern interventions?"  (However, it seems to me that all populations develop interventions of some type.)  Are any midwives compiling statistics on homebirth breastfeeding outcomes?  We seem to have this pollyanna view of the days of yore when everyone breastfed with very few pressures or problems.  From what I have read, however, women have always had to deal with many issues that impacted on their ability to breastfeed and women have chosen not to breastfeed, despite the obvious extremely poor outcomes, for a variety of reasons.  Which is not to deny the fact that cultural pressures have really built up over the past century to get us where we are today in a definitely formula-fed society, for the most part.

As far as delayed childbirth is concern, while it may indeed be desirable for many women, it is not "natural" for women to begin their childbearing in their forties and the problems we are seeing should not be unexpected.  We see the consequences when we fool with the natural rhythms of childbirth and breastfeeding, why would there not be consequences when we fool with the rhythms of natural fertility and conception.  As always, we weigh the benefits vs the risks and make our choices, which will differ for each of us.  Fascinating stuff.






Warmly,
Sharon Knorr, BSMT, ASCP, IBCLC
Newark, NY (near Rochester on Lake Ontario)
mailto:[log in to unmask]

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