I just wanted to comment on this. I come from a family with a history of
asthma - my mother has a severe case, as do I, and my youngest son developed
asthma as an infant. The specialist who saw him wanted me to wean him so
that he could be observed in the hospital and his medication adjusted. Of
course, I refuesed, and I managed his treatment myself. While we have had a
couple of trips to emergency, he's never had to be hospitalized.

When we returned to this specialist when Jeremy was two (and still
nursing!), he was very impressed by how well he was doing for an asthmatic
child. He said he'd never seen a child who had such severe asthma at such a
young age who didn't need to be hospitalized more than once in the first
couple of years, and that usually they had other health problems, too. He
finally told me "I can only attribute it to the breastfeeding." Jeremy's
asthma seemed to go away when he was four, and he's been fine ever since.

So while breastfeeding didn't prevent my son from developing asthma, I'm
convinced that it made a big difference in how well he did.

Teresa