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The purpose of this paper is to investigate and re-estimate the effects of breastfeeding patterns, women's nutritional and health status, and energy expenditure on the timing of resumption of postpartum fecundability (i.e. resumption of postpartum menses) using all the relevant information in the Instituto de Nutrición de Centroamérica y Panamá longitudinal study and a more adequate estimation procedure (hazard models). The data used in this study come from a Longitudinal Study carried out in Guatemala between 1967 and 1979. In this article we use a multi-state hazard model that recognizes different pathways and states in the process of returning to the postpartum fecundability. The model relies on the existence of five states (fully breastfeeding, partial breastfeeding, weaning, infant mortality and menses). It also includes explicitly maternal nutrition and women's energy expenditure as strategic elements of the model. The study shows that the estimated effects of breastfeeding patterns, maternal nutrition and women's work patterns (energy expenditure) on resumption of fecundability in rural Guatemala are strong and significant. The contribution of this paper is to show that application of hazard models with multiple states provides estimates that are consistent with hypotheses relating lactation patterns, maternal nutritional status and maternal external stressors to processes that accelerate (decelerate) resumption of normal menstrual cycles.

The main purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship existing between Gender-Based Violence (GVB) and the Use of Reproductive Health and Family Planning services. To carry out this task, we use multivariate logit regression models to explore the direction and strength of the relationship, using a population-based sample for Bolivian women during 2003-2004. Results show a strong, negative and significant relationship between GVB and use of RH/FP services at the population-level, after adjusting for respondent’s and partner’s individual and household characteristics. That is, GBV is strongly and significantly associated with the use of RH/FP services, in a way that women experiencing domestic violence are less likely to use those services.

The objective of the present study is to examine the effects of several reproductive and demographic factors on child survival in Bolivia, one of the most impoverished nations in all of Latin America. We model the joint effects of maternal age, parity, pace of childbearing, duration of breastfeeding, and use of modern contraception on child mortality. Data for this research come from “Demographic and Health Survey” (DHS) carried out during 1998. The results obtained in this paper support the evidence found in other studies: breastfeeding and the pace of childbearing are the most important reproductive patterns affecting child mortality risks, and their strong, consistent effects tend to persist even after the introduction of various socioeconomic variables as controls: short preceding birth intervals and short durations of breastfeeding increase the risk of death during the first two years of life.

The association between breastfeeding patterns and resumption of postpartum menstruation was examined in rural Guatemalan women from the INCAP longitudinal study (1969-1977). It was distinguished among women who experienced infant mortality before menses resumed, women who weaned before menses resumed, and women who had return of menses while still breastfeeding. Weaning and infant mortality before menses resumes are significant risk factors for resumption of postpartum menstruation. Among those women whose menses resumed while still nursing or who remained amenorrheic and nursing at lose to follow-up or the end of the study, low number of nursing bouts per 24-hr day and the early introduction of supplements to the child were significant risk factors for the return of postpartum menstruation.