I believe any discussion of breastfeeding as a part of human sexuality would be deficient without a discussion of oxytocin and prolactin. Here's a page with more links to abstracts on oxytocin than you could possibly want: http://www.oxytocin.org/refs/index.html Niles Newton and others have been telling us for a long time that women bond to men they have orgasms with, men they give birth naturally with the support of, and children they nurse, so it sure is the "love hormone". There's less research on the effects of nonpathological prolactin levels, but I like to call it the "earth mother" hormone -- it seems to induce serenity and nurturing. I rather miss who I was when nursing. I'd love to do a study of nursing mothers of infants who also have toddlers versus bottle feeding mothers of infants who also have toddlers. Wonder what the relative stress hormone levels would be like. In my case, I believe any negative effect on my libido of being anovulatory for several months was offset by the lower stress hormones. For me, stress hormones are the big libido-crusher. Betsy Liotus wrote a great article taking into account a lot of the aspects of functioning as a breastfeeding woman in relation to her family for the March-April 1996 issue of "New Beginnings": http://www.lalecheleague.org/NB/NBMarApr96p36.html I'm not sure how I'd put it to a college student audience, but I believe oxytocin and prolactin are precious natural resources, and the prevalence of evils from divorce to domestic violence to child neglect to shaken baby syndrome suggests to me that we ignore their effects at our peril. Ruth Piatak, LLLL Plano, TX *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html