You are so, so right, Sue - both on the problems created by a) the urge to 
create stockpiles and the focus on pumps, and on b) what should be focused 
upon, i.e. "How the Breast Makes Milk". I've been concerned about this for a 
long time. So many Mums already have a pump  before giving birth, or very 
soon after, and as they cost a lot or if they were gifts, the mindset is 
that they ought to be used.  So they are used unnecessarily, because they 
are there, and then to use the expressed milk a bottle is introduced - and 
so it goes... It's very sad when a Mum is expressing for her small 
stockpile, with her healthy baby in the same room or another room, and it 
doesn't occur to her to pick up her baby. Objects given priority over people 
(baby people). Also sad, in this thunderstorm-prone region where electricity 
blackouts can and do occur, would be when someone loses her precious 
stockpile, or has to use it or dump it as it is thawing. Mercifully, most of 
the Mums I see who are pumping, for their own reassurance, only have a few 
batches stored and I've only occasionally heard of a "freezer full".

By the way, when talking with Mums, I often use the term "machine" in 
relation to pumps - "pumping machine", "milking machine", "mechanical 
pumping". It is an accurate term and sounds less cosy. No one has objected.

Mercifully, I seldom see those apps for recording every moment of the baby's 
day, but some clients do use their own homemade old-style paper record. At 
least it doesn't take over their lives to the extent of the apps.

Virginia

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sue Jocoby wrote:

Stockpiling breastmilk.  Arrrgg!  This seems to be becoming a standard that 
mothers believe they must practice, starting almost immediately after birth. 
So we have lots of focused attention on the pump (as WELL as those hand-held 
devices) and then lots and lots of obsessing over whether their supply is 
"enough" "dropping" "needs building."

Then I get mothers in to my clinic stating that they have exausted all of 
their stockpile and need formula.  Did they pump every time they or a 
caregiver offered some of that stockpiled milk?  No!

I think the insistance that every mother in a health plan be allowed to get 
a breast pump is going to make things worse.  We need a national teach-in on 
"How The Breast Makes Milk."  And what interferes!

Stockpiles are for premies.  And even then those mothers need to pump or 
nurse when the baby gets out of the hospital.  These mothers often do what I 
described, above, and then "don't have enough milk,"

Sue Jacoby
CA

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