Dear June, I work for a WIC agency and we loan mostly Elite and some Lactinas to moms with premature babies who are on our program. Most of my job is setting them up with a pump (the initial consult with me) and then calling every week to encourage them. I have about 15-20 moms with loaner pumps in the summer time and about 8-10 pumps loaned out in the winter time each month. I tell moms to pump 8 times in 24 hours, I have recently started saying every 2-3 hours in the day, every 3-4 hours in the night. When the moms stop pumping in the middle of the night, their supply almost always drops. I would hope mom would be pumping about 3 ounces each time by now (meaning 3 ounces combined from both breasts). I would also want to know what pump she is on. What the most recent Medela research showed was that most moms pumped 5-6 times a day and make about 16-17 ounces in 24 hours. I may have the numbers a little wrong but this was the general gist of it. Most of the mothers that I work with start losing their supply when they drop below a certain number of pumpings per day. For women who have a huge supply, they can cut back to 5-6 times and still make 3-4 ounces total each pumping. For moms with a normal supply, at 5 times a day they are usually down to 2 ounces total per pumping. Some things slow down a milk supply, like maternal illness, getting started pumping after 48 hours postpartum, and some medications. So I might not worry at 7 days postpartum, but I would go over how often, how long, and what kind of pump with this mother. From my experience working with pumping mothers of premies, when moms make a low amount on day 10 things don't usually improve much and these mothers are at risk of quitting early. There are exceptions to this rule and I do work with a low income, often life stressed population, lots of single mothers. Sometimes Reglan helps increase the milk supply. Reglan is all they can afford and get a prescription for - most do not have internet or money, nor will they purchase herbs. Kathy Eng, BSW, IBCLC In Houston where we are being told to expect Hurricane Rita on Friday night!! *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html