Dear all:

Now that I've humiliated myself with my double negative -- and corrections never seem 
to have the same weight as the original misstatement -- had a ROFL over the pee analogy 
and washed my own hands too...

I will repeat what I have said before about baby efficiency.  In Manhattan, many parents 
are completely crazed about their baby's performance.  There is now a commercial that 
my son has seen many times and I just noticed on the TV about teaching your baby to 
read.  They showed an 8 month old with flash cards.  This obsession with babies and 
children as a product that should be efficient and perfect is extreme here.  One nursery 
school actually asks toddlers "what is 200 plus 200" during the "play visit".  

For this reason, I hate the term "the baby is more efficient than the pump".  And it is 
simply not true most of the time.  Babies are MORE PHYSIOLOGIC than the pump and 
contact with their baby provide all sorts of physiologic advantages to the mom including 
calming, both the baby and her.

How I've used Hartman's research findings true when they have a baby that has a 
problem that makes it impossible for THAT PARTICULAR baby to remove enough milk to 
get enough calories.  Therefore, their baby is more more efficient than expressing milk 
(which usually, but not always is via the pump in such circumstances).

I have to say that I don't even find it true for most healthy breastfeeding babies either 
until they get to be about 3 months old and my clinical files on cases back this up. And I 
have seen some lovely women -- for some odd reason women working in finance seem to 
be especially good at this -- who in contrast to the rest of our Manhattan culture seem to 
be excellent hand expresses.  Go figure.

I also don't generally use the term pumping anymore when I do the prenatal classes.  I 
talk about "expressing" milk (which can be done with a hand or a pump).  When 
"purchasing items" comes up I try to dissuade them from buying a pump beforehand 
because a) before they have the baby they can't really know whether they will really 
need it or want it and b) it can be a very expensive purchase.

The problem with pump is that it can exacerbate the normal hoarding behavior that 
mothers are hardwired to engage in for their children.  This is where the huge blackout 
we had in Manhattan (and others in the outer boroughs) can be used as an example to 
tone down insane levels of pumping to feed the freezer.  So, when I talk of the tears and 
loss that occurred during the blackouts, I can tone down the hoarding behavior of some 
mothers.  

Best, Susan

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