Bravo to Marie Davis for taking a stand with a less-than-supportive hospital
staff and coming away the winner!  I'm very pleased to have played even a
tiny, indirect part in this!  One idea, concerning the "wean at one year"
advice -- you can make copies of the Breastfeeding Abstracts two-page piece
I did on "a natural age at weaning" (Aug 1994) and give those to interested
pediatricians to ponder.

Tonight we went to our local bookstore/video rental super-mart and I was
browsing the "new baby" shelves while Steven took the boys to the bathroom.
Dr. Sears has a new book out (1995 pub. date) titled SIDS - the subtitle was
long and I didn't write it down, but it was something like "What every
parent should know to protect their children from Sudden Infant Death
Syndrome."  I didn't buy a copy, because I wanted to leave the two copies
there on the shelf for others to see and buy, but I did turn both of them so
the entire front covers were showing!  It looked like a wonderful book,
written in laypersons' terms, and included seven steps to help protect your
children against SIDS.  The first was to take care of yourself during
pregnancy.  The second was to put the baby to sleep on its side or back, not
on its stomach.  The third was "don't smoke" or let anyone else smoke around
the baby.  The fourth was breastfeed.  The fifth was sleep with your baby.
I may have the sequence or the numbers wrong, but you get the idea.  He
talked a lot about the benefits of breastfeeding for the baby's developing
brain and the benefits of co-sleeping for helping organize the baby's sleep
cycles and respiratory patterns.  It was well-documented, but in an
unobtrusive way, with all the references listed in the back and numbered,
and just the numbers inserted where appropriate.  He cited several of
McKenna and Mosko's recent studies on co-sleeping.  Not as much as I would
have wanted, being the president of the James McKenna Fan Club, but I was
thrilled to see that he had written this book.  Maybe this is one you could
give to new parents!

By the way, I'm going to be in the Washington D.C. area this November
(16th-19th) if anyone would like to get together, or have me come talk to an
LLL meeting, or a group of physicians, or lc's, or anyone really -- I'll
stand on the mall in D.C. and talk about breastfeeding to passersby!  :)

I'll also be in Wilmington, Delaware, near Philly, the week of Thanksgiving,
if anyone wants to try to get together then.  Someone at the LLLI Conference
in Chicago suggested maybe I could talk to an LLL area conference in Philly
in November, but she never got back to me.  Are you out there?

I don't charge anything for my time, so this isn't advertising, I hope.
Please let me know by private e-mail.


Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Texas A&M University
e-mail to [log in to unmask]