Ms. Kucharczk,
  You and Ms. Mading made some wonderful points.  I absolutely agree that a mother considering exclusive pumping should be forewarned about the monumental task she is attempting and it is accurate to portray it as twice the work. To honestly review the risks regarding maintaining milk supply is also appropriate. It is also appropriate to recommend as much skin to skin as possible and access to the breast for as much licking, nuzzling and latching as possible and to offer paced bottlefeeding techniques to not "close the door" on direct breastfeeding. 
  It is important to realize that these mothers are making a decision to exclusively pump often out of desperation to nourish their babies after struggling to breastfeed for many days and usually weeks. I wouldn’t dare minimize a mother’s commitment to pumping and providing EBM for their infant as an easy "guiltfree" choice.
   
  I have breastfed 2 children with ease, lifting my shirt wherever I happened to be and allowing them to latch themselves while I barely gave it a thought. I still breastfeed my 4 year old in this effortless manner, mostly at night, while hardly awake.
   
  My third child was born last April and much to my regret and profound grief we have taken a very different journey together. With great energy and planning and preparation I provide breastmilk for him. I very deliberately arrange for time to pump and for pumping accessories to be taken with me out of the house and for things to be clean, etc everyday, day after day. My milk supply is precious to me and I protect it ferociously, something I never gave a second thought to while breastfeeding my first two children. I work very hard to provide something for him that no one else on this planet can give him and he gets his milk fresh, warm and lying on my bare chest the majority of the time. I cherish the time that he latches off and on dreamily at night as we cosleep.
   
  I think that some LCs and breastfeeding supporters may actually believe that bottlefeeding mothers are akin to the wire monkey mothers from those Harlow's experiments in the 1950s with baby rhesus monkeys. (When given a choice between a wire mother with a bottle and a warm cloth mother without one, the monkeys clung to the soft, comforting cloth mothers. They preferred comfort over food. The monkeys raised with only a wire mother became emotionally disturbed.) 
  There are many ways to nourish a baby. Loving touch, warm snuggles, skin to skin, attachment parenting, gazing into those huge eyes. I am not a wire mother with a bottle and most pumping mother’s I meet aren’t either. As LCs, we need to provide these pumping mother’s with appropriate, nonjudgemental support and information just as we would any other mother and, I believe, we should applaud their intentions to lovingly provide the breastmilk their babies deserve.
   
  Mary Herrington, RN, IBCLC
  Lactation Services
  Memorial Hermann
  The Woodlands, TX

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