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Subject:
From:
"Kathleen G. Auerbach" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 16 Mar 1997 11:48:42 -0800
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I second Dettwyler's wisdom-enriched post about the statistical artifact we
call an "average."

Remember that arithmetic mean (the average) is derived by adding all the
amounts of time together (from the speediest to the most pokey) and
dividing by the number of individuals involved.  That figure has NO
RELATIONSHIP to ANY of the babies involved UNLESS a particular individual
just happened to nurse that amount of time.

Perhaps more appropriate (from a statistical standpoint) would be to find
the modal (most frequently occurring) length of time babies nurse.  To do
so and be relevant to reality would require each time be linked to age of
the baby; ie only those 1-day old babies contribute to modal length of time
for 1-day old babies  AND mothers helped NOT to take baby off.

This would be MOST difficult to manage in a culture where so many other
variables create situations in which the mother must CONTROL the feeding.
We need to teach all mothers that babies be given the opportunity to
control their own feedings, just as most adults do.  I really LOVE the
example given earlier of limiting a prospective parent to a 10-minute (or
5-minute) feeding to give them the idea of how a baby would feel when the
breast is taken away.  By placing ourselves in the position of the
vulnerable baby, we may learn far more about their lives than a whole
bookshelf of "baby care" books--which really seem to me to be designed to
make parents feel good doing something the author has told them to do!

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"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly
disguised as impossible situations."
Kathleen G. Auerbach,PhD, IBCLC (Ferndale, WA USA) [log in to unmask]
WEB PAGE: http://www.telcomplus.com/~kga/lactation.html
LACTNET archives http://library.ummed.edu/lsv/archives/lactnet.html

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