Elisheva makes some excellent points regarding how the ability to pump can
make  some women feel more confident and willing to nurse. However, I
frequently encounter the opposite situation. Women have somehow gotten the
idea that pumping is an absolute component of the breastfeeding experience
and if they are only able to pump a little bit , or if they find it a huge
hassle, or if their baby refuses to take a bottle of pumped milk (which
happens more frequently than women are led to believe, IMO), they feel that
they are failing at breastfeeding altogether  and had better quit right away.
The idea that pumping is a lways a necessary component of successful
breastfeeding seems to be a relatively new phenomenon and I now see an awful
lot of mothers who, instead of *nursing* their babies, are pumping and
offering bottles of EBM exclusively. This attitude is so pervasive that when
my book was being edited recently, my editor wanted to change the line
"pumping can be a valuable part of some women's breastfeeding experience." to
"pumping is an important part of the breastfeeding experience." As a busy
working mother in NYC, that was how she sees it. All her friends pump and
bottle feed. (I kept the line as I had written it, by the way :-)

Katie Allison Granju
http://www.attachmentparent.com/

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