Meg

Wonderful news that you are giving a talk to doctors next month about breast
pumps and hand expression and have this superb opportunity to educate them
about technique, and about a resource for mothers (you!).

For something in print you might think about using "Helping mothers
breastfeed" by Felicity Savage, and parts of the yellow manual for the l8
hour course, "Breastfeeding Management in a baby-friendly hospital" by
UNICEF/WHO 1993.  The clincher would be if you could find a mother willing
to demonstrate hand-expression to the doctors, but I guess that would be
asking too much?  When Peter Hartmann was here several years ago we did a
triangular session at a conference - Peter gave the theoretical/research
background on milk synthesis, I was the breastfeeding supporter showing the
mother the technique, and then we had a mother actually demonstrating
hand-expression of her milk.  If you were to think of this I would suggest
inviting a mother whose baby is at least 3 months old - my observation is
that the older the baby the "softer" the breasts, and the stronger the milk
will jet so that you could have quite a dramatic and memorable demonstration!

UNICEF have also done a video of mothers hand-expressing at Kenyatta
Hospital in Nairobi, "Breastfeeding Low Birth Weight Babies", but the
technique is not too good and you can see some bruising (!!) on the mothers'
breasts.  Perhaps others can suggest something better?  If you have a breast
model (I obtained one from Childbirth Graphics years ago) you could probably
demonstrate the technique with this to make it look easy and do-able, and
explain in some detail how and why it works, and how *not* to do it.

Best wishes with your talk.  Please keep us posted!

Pamela Morrison IBCLC, Harare, Zimbabwe
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