Hi Alexis.

I had this problem by the end of each of my kids' first years.   As long as I
thought about what I was doing, the baby, the pumping process, nursing, etc,
the breasts just clammed up.   All of the conventional advice about smelling
the baby's t-shirt, etc -- all of which did generally work in the immediate
postpartum period -- just made it even harder to stimulate MER while pumping
as they got a wee bit older.

The only thing that worked was *strong* distraction.    In my case the most
helpful thing was to get my husband to read something truly outrageous from
the newspaper.  If he could distract me for even 3 minutes I was gushing --
this after sometimes a full half hour with barely drops at the bottom of the
pump-bottles.    Sometimes when I was pumping at work I would take work calls
on the speaker phone (especially close colleagues who wouldn't freak out if
they heard the whoosh-whoosh of the pump in the background!) and that would
distract me well, too.

The other thing I would add is that someone recently posted about sites for
stimulating let=down being both the nipples *and the breast-chest-wall*.
Maybe everybody but me already realized this??   But I hadn't, and it has
made a HUGE difference to ease of stimulating MER when pumping.   I still
massage to get individual ducts to clear, after MER, but to stimulate the
reflex I am finding this much more effective than massage, shaking, etc.
(Whoever posted this, thank you!)

Elisheva Urbas, NYC
researching in bf lab 12 times a day :)

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html