> When people say to me "My kids were formula fed and they are fine," I point > out that they still have many years ahead of them during which they may > develop asthma, diabetes, coronary heart disease, multiple sclerosis, > cancer, or one of the other later-in-life diseases for which formula > increases the risk. I wanted to add to this thread this tidbit: I have an 11 month old daughter who is just learning to walk alone. She has 2 cousins (boys) who learned to walk at 13 and 16 months. They were breastfed ±3 months and none at all respectively. My daughter is still breastfed and didn't even start eating solids until 8 months, so she had 8 months of concentrated human milk only. These 2 boys were both started on solids at 2 months. To top it off, the one who was not bf at all sat by himself only when he was 8 months (my daughter did at 5 months) and only crawled at 11 months (my daughter did at 9 months). If I went out and said, based on these *3* people (very small bunch to base anything remotely study-like on!) that bf babies learn to walk/crawl and sit faster than non bf babies, and that the differences are more important the longer the child was breastfed. On top of that, introducing solids earlier makes a child walk/crawl/sit at a later age than if the child is on milk alone until a later age. If I were to say this based on these 3 people, I'd be lynched. People would be all over me telling me how these differences could be (and probably are) based way more on genetics, perhaps sex of the child, and perhaps also in-utero experiences (i.e. was one of the children exposed to drugs/alcohol and not the others?) than it would be linked to the type of milk and the length of consumption before starting solids. I actually do believe that there is some evidence that shows that motor control (i.e. learning to crawl/walk/sit etc.) is learned earlier in bf babies, but that does not mean that you can't have a 16 month old bf baby who's only just learning how to walk, and an 11 month formula-fed baby who learned at that age! Statistics are only valid when you compare large populations of people, but when it comes to an individual person in that population, that person can be the exception to the rule. Therefore, what one should look at is that the formula fed child will generally be *sicker* than they would otherwise have been had they been breastfed. Not that they will be completely the most unhealthy person in the whole world! Fio. *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html