Kathleen M. Merchant

The effects of repeated cycles of reproduction were discussed in a paper on "Reproductive Stress and Women's Nutrition", by Professor Reynaldo Martorell, (at the time of Stanford University and now at Cornell, USA) and Dr Kathleen Merchant (Cornell).
...
The discussion on Dr Huffman's paper was by introduced Dr Charlotte Gardiner, Director of Maternal and Child Health, Ghana; for the paper by Martorell and Merchant, Professor Barry Popkin (North Carolina) introduced the discussion; Dr Solidad Diaz (Chile) introduced the comments on Dr Short's paper.
...
Drs Martorell and Merchant gave evidence in their paper that spacing reproductive events is necessary for maternal recovery.Repeated reproductive cycles have been referred to as "maternal depletion syndrome", but they proposed avoiding this term and regarding effects of reproductive stress on women's health and nutritional status as a continuum."The question is not whether or not maternal nutrition is affected by reproductive stress, but under what circumstances are effects noted and to what degree and in what aspects."

A substantial proportion of women in developing countries are lactating and pregnant at the same time.This situation - perhaps not widely appreciated - is clearly likely to increase the stress on women's health and nutrition.It is referred to as "overlap" by Martorell and Merchant, defined as two or more weeks of breastfeeding during pregnancy.
...
The effects of reproductive stress on mothers and infants were shown by Drs Martorell and Merchant using the data from an INCAP longitudinal study.

by Kathleen M Merchant, PhD, Consultant to the International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, D.C.
...
3. Merchant, K. & Martorell, R. (1988).Frequent Reproductive Cycling: Does It Lead to Nutritional Depletion of Mothers?Prog Food Sci Nutr Sci, 12, 339-369.

4. Durnin, J.V.G.A. (1987) Energy Requirements of Pregnancy: An Integration of the Longitudinal Data from the Five-Country Study.Lancet, 2, 1131-1133.

5. Merchant, K.M., Martorell, R. & Haas, J.D. (1990).Maternal and Fetal Responses to the Stress of Lactation Concurrent with Pregnancy and Recuperative Intervals.Am J Clin Nut, 52, 280-288.

6. Merchant, K.M., Martorell, R. & Haas, J.D. (1990).Consequences for Maternal Nutrition of Reproductive Stress Across Consecutive Pregnancies.Am J Clin Nutri., 52, 612-620.

7. Martorell, R. & Merchant, K. (1992).Reproductive Stress and Women's Nutrition.Chapter 3 in: Nutrition and Population Links.ACC/SCN Symposium Report Nutrition Policy Discussion Paper No. 11.

8. UNFPA(1989) State of World Population 1989.Investing in Women: The Focus of the Nineties.United Nations Population Fund.