Re: babies spitting up.

Lois Patterson writes:
Anyways, the more scholarly point of my post is as follows:
>Books like The Continuum Concept (and a few others I have read) indicate
>that babies in those cultures never spit up milk after nursing.
>
>So my main point -- is it true that in "traditional" cultures, babies do
>not spit up milk?

I haven't looked at this issue specifically in the ethnographic literature
(as I have for thumb-sucking), but I don't remember it being discussed very
much.  In Mali, babies don't spit up, nor are they burped, ever.  The
"traditional" pattern of nursing frequency, which matches what one would
expect based on breast milk composition, is very frequent but very short
nursing episodes, like every 15 minutes for a few minutes, around the clock.
Thus, you seldom get babies with a full stomach of milk to be vomiting.
What also happens is that they are often placed on their mother's back after
nursing and tied on with a length of cloth while she goes about her work.
This means that the baby is generally vertical (not on its stomach or back,
and not at a slant like in a baby carrier), moving around in lots of
different positions as mother pounds millet, chops firewood, works in the
field, bends over washing dishes, or dances around to jiggle the baby to
sleep, or whatever.  Also, Malian women do not drink cows' milk very often
(in some parts of the country not at all, in other parts maybe once a day
during some seasons of the year) -- I've often wondered just how huge a role
cows' milk in the mother's diet plays in vomiting breast milk in the U.S.


Re: Scientific American article
>
>The article about breastfeeding and immunities in the December issue is
>*really* interesting and informative, so I contacted the magazine for
>permission to duplicate it for use in my inservices with nurses, med
>students, and residents--strictly for educational purposes, in a non-profit
>setting.  Unfortunately, the magazine's policy is to authorize no more than
>100 copies of an article, at a cost of $3 per copy, for such use.  Needless
>to say, my boss was not willing to cough up that kind of money.  I realize
>that publishing a magazine is a business enterprise, and I could understand
>charging if the request was from someone planning to include the article in a
>packet at a money-making event, but I was taken aback at the cost for
>educational, non-profit purposes.  Is that common?  (I've been writing the
>handouts I've used in the past.)


Yes, this is common/standard.  You can get around it by having each student
photocopy their own copy of the article.  At most universities professors
use some variation of this system -- they put the originals of all the
handouts they want to use on file at a place like Kinko's, Notes N'Quotes,
Copy Corner, etc., and each student goes in and requests one copy for
themselves.  That falls within the realm of "fair use for personal,
educational purposes."   I don't know how much a copy of Scientific American
costs these days, but it seems like you ought to be able to buy an entire
copy of the magazine for $3.00!  Maybe they would let your order bulk
quantities of the magazine itself.  When I teach Human Variation I have the
students buy a special issue of TIME magazine from a year ago that was
devoted to "The Changing Face of America" -- TIME gave me a discount bulk
price for the magazines, and I sell them to the students.

Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Specialist in infant feeding and growth of children
Texas A&M University
e-mail to [log in to unmask]
(409) 845-5256
(409) 778-4513