I had a great (long, tiring, hot!) day in a conference given by Pierre
Lévesque, OB-GYN from Rimouski.

He is one of our québécois bf specialists...and he said some pretty neat
things, probably none of which are truely "new" around here, but it was
nice to hear them spoken here in Québec, to a bunch of (mainly) nurses
and doctors (we girls from Allaitement Québec had a special invitation
to see him speak).

Amongst other things that were discussed:

-Kathy Dettwyler's research and the different things she speaks of
happening around weaning time (permenant teeth, 4 x birth weight, etc.)

-our close-ness to chimps (he says we're closer to chimps than chimps
are to gorillas, genetically speaking...)

-The !Kung people were mentioned a lot...as was the fact that they nurse
approx. 4 times per hour day in and day out, for about 4 yrs.

-the relative new-ness of agriculture...he said that if you take the
whole time we humans (H. sapiens) exist, and compare it to a 24-hr
period, agriculture would come in the last 6 minutes of that time. Thus,
23 hrs 54 min. is spent as "hunters/gatherers"...these people would
obviously not have had milk from other species (not raising cows or any
other animals), nor were they eating many grain products (he mentioned
the "evils" of gluten!).

-I suspect he must be a pretty "good" ob-gyn; one of the things he said
that I liked the most was how chimps have sex "in public" (i.e. in
amongst the rest of their group) without any problems, but the females
go into private seclusion to give birth...we humans have sex in private
but our births are often real "orgies", LOL.  ;-)   He says "isn't that
a bit backwards?".  ;-)

-He took some of the stuff out of bf texts and said it was not
true...i.e. the stuff that says newborns have to nurse 8-12 times per
hour (every 2-3 hours)...he said our biology would prefer that we nurse
like the !Kung or the chimps, 3-4 times an hour...and if we do that,
there is very little difference in the milk taken in from one nursing
session to the next, and from beginning to end (b/c it only lasts a
couple of minutes)...i.e. the whole concept of foremilk-hindmilk is no
longer there.  He discussed why, and the prolactine levels and such...

-He talked about prolactin levels staying high when nursing is very
frequent.  Chimps and !Kung having an average of 5 offspring during
their whole fertile life...and using no "contraception" other than
nursing.  He said that the !Kung have no word for "menstruation" since
it rarely occurs in their society!  He said it is not normal for us to
have PMS and menstruation every month for years on end...it is more
natural to be in a constant state of ammenorhea, getting pg again once
every 4-5 yrs, perhaps even before the return of menses.

-I said that obviously Sandrine had started out her life figuring out
what she needed, when she was a permalatch baby who would nurse every 20
min...but probably my changing sides so often made for the excess milk,
I had to diminish that, and eventually she disliked nursing enough that
she was not nursing often enough to keep menses at bay...maybe by
nursing frequently (but on the same side for hours at a time I guess)
for months on end I wouldn't get them back so fast (7.5 mos).

Anyhow...it was nice to see it presented here...tomorrow is part
two...we'll see what else he has to tell us.  He is a good speaker,
keeps us laughing with comics and humouristic comments.

Fio.
ressource person with Allaitement Québec
Mama to Sandrine, 30 mos, and #2, 11/2002


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