>Her baby is now 6 months old. Mother working, pumping, has had 
>problems in past maintaining her supply
>This by the way, was a 
>mother who in the early stages was able to pump 10 ozs easily in the 
>mornings. 

I've seen working mothers whose babies asked for only 2-4 hourly breastfeeding in the early months (perhaps stalling because of an oversupply), who end up pumping at home to give more and more milk at work, and their whole feeding schedule flip-flops - the baby is getting much more milk at daycare from bottles than he gets from the breast at home, and supply overall falters.  One poor mom was ultimately nursing only 3x/day, in order to have time to pump for the daycare bottles.  

Might some piece of this be pertinent here?  An oversupply at first that led to infrequent nursing, that led to very little nursing at all once mom was back at work, that led to early periods and a low supply?

For the 3x/day baby I worked with, part of our digging her out was to dilute some of the bottles at work just a bit for a while, so that her need to pump was reduced and she could step up the at-home nursings.  The baby was thriving and starting solids, so I didn't feel the dilution was a problem.  And as she increased those at-home nursings we figured out additional ways to reduce the baby's daycare bottle demand - finger-foods, a cup or slower bottle given more slowly.  It took some time to lure him (and her!) into casual "social' nursing instead of breastfeeding just for hunger, and - no surprise - there was a nursing strike along the way.  But her supply improved as did her pleasure in their breastfeeding relationship.   

Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC  Ithaca, NY  USA
www.wiessinger.baka.com

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