Dear all: Now that I've humiliated myself with my double negative -- and corrections never seem to have the same weight as the original misstatement -- had a ROFL over the pee analogy and washed my own hands too... I will repeat what I have said before about baby efficiency. In Manhattan, many parents are completely crazed about their baby's performance. There is now a commercial that my son has seen many times and I just noticed on the TV about teaching your baby to read. They showed an 8 month old with flash cards. This obsession with babies and children as a product that should be efficient and perfect is extreme here. One nursery school actually asks toddlers "what is 200 plus 200" during the "play visit". For this reason, I hate the term "the baby is more efficient than the pump". And it is simply not true most of the time. Babies are MORE PHYSIOLOGIC than the pump and contact with their baby provide all sorts of physiologic advantages to the mom including calming, both the baby and her. How I've used Hartman's research findings true when they have a baby that has a problem that makes it impossible for THAT PARTICULAR baby to remove enough milk to get enough calories. Therefore, their baby is more more efficient than expressing milk (which usually, but not always is via the pump in such circumstances). I have to say that I don't even find it true for most healthy breastfeeding babies either until they get to be about 3 months old and my clinical files on cases back this up. And I have seen some lovely women -- for some odd reason women working in finance seem to be especially good at this -- who in contrast to the rest of our Manhattan culture seem to be excellent hand expresses. Go figure. I also don't generally use the term pumping anymore when I do the prenatal classes. I talk about "expressing" milk (which can be done with a hand or a pump). When "purchasing items" comes up I try to dissuade them from buying a pump beforehand because a) before they have the baby they can't really know whether they will really need it or want it and b) it can be a very expensive purchase. The problem with pump is that it can exacerbate the normal hoarding behavior that mothers are hardwired to engage in for their children. This is where the huge blackout we had in Manhattan (and others in the outer boroughs) can be used as an example to tone down insane levels of pumping to feed the freezer. So, when I talk of the tears and loss that occurred during the blackouts, I can tone down the hoarding behavior of some mothers. Best, Susan *********************************************** Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html To reach list owners: [log in to unmask] Mail all list management commands to: [log in to unmask] COMMANDS: 1. To temporarily stop your subscription write in the body of an email: set lactnet nomail 2. To start it again: set lactnet mail 3. To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet 4. To get a comprehensive list of rules and directions: get lactnet welcome