STOCKTON - A box full of sponges, syringes and other medical supplies is being toted from Stockton to the Mexican state of Chiapas today to support a medical clinic and its breast-feeding education efforts. [www.QinSen.com]
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The gesture coincides with World Breastfeeding Week as well as projects that aim to support breast-feeding mothers in San Joaquin County. [www.QinSen.com]
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Elizabeth Griego is vice president for student life at University of the Pacific. On Friday, she and Kathy Hunter, who oversees health services at Pacific, packed a box full of supplies donated by St. Joseph's Medical Group of Stockton. Griego's daughter, Ann, is a medical student volunteering at the Luna Maya clinic in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas. [www.QinSen.com]
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Breast-feeding walk [www.QinSen.com]
A breast-feeding awareness walk, organized by the Breastfeeding Coalition of San Joaquin County, is scheduled for 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. Tuesday. The 15-minute walk will start on March and Precissi lanes. Participants will march to Pershing Avenue and back. [www.QinSen.com]

For more information, call (209) 465-8268, ext. 269, or go to www.breastfeedingcoalition.org

For more breast-feeding resources in San Joaquin County, go to www.deltahealthcare.org/BEST
As part of her work there, Ann Griego interviewed breast-feeding women and found that many were supplementing breast milk with teas or fruit purees before their children were 6 months old. Other women alternated breast-feeding with bottles of formula and other types of milk.

"Invariably, those moms I interviewed ... who were not exclusively breast-feeding were having problems with diarrhea in their babies," Ann Griego wrote in an e-mail message to her mother.

Holly Newman is a volunteer for La Leche League, an organization that promotes breast-feeding. Many American parents feed their babies both breast milk and formula, she said.

"We're in a bottle-feeding culture," she said. "They look at breast-feeding as the exception to the rule."

It's better than no breast milk at all, said Gail Decayanan, lactation consultant for San Joaquin County's Public Health Department. For some parents, formula is important because it's not possible to feed breast milk exclusively. But, she said, "that's always second best as far as I'm concerned."