Gonneke always raises points that get my brain working.  So, I've been contemplating the 
statement "The baby is more efficient than the pump".   We've all quoted it, even those of us who 
have found that the pump can often be more "efficient" at removing milk.  

Maybe its because it is the start of another school year and I'm very unhappy about how life has 
changed for children in the United States such that they are expected to do far more work than I 
ever did growing up.  I had a childhood with free time.  Time to get bored, let my mind wander, let 
my imagination run wild.  I wasn't expected to be efficient or effective, I was supposed to have fun 
and learn enough in school to stay out of trouble.

For the healthy mother and baby, I do not think we should promote the idea that the baby has to 
be "efficient".  If the baby is healthily gaining weight and the feedings are within a healthy range 
for mother and baby, there are many other benefits that are being gained during the process that 
goes far beyond feeding.

When mother and baby are out of sync this is different.  The pump can be, for many mothers, an 
efficient means of reestablishing the milk supply or of increasing the milk supply when there are 
physiologic limitations that may be partially overcome.  It is no substitute for baby time.

So, I always spend time with the mother to try to figure out how she can get the baby time in.  
This can be breast time or skin to skin time or both.  Sometimes, the mother can actually spend 
more time bonding with her baby through skin to skin than she was able to do when she was 
struggling to help the baby attach to the breast or when she was poking and prodding and 
dipping wet wash cloths and otherwise pushing her baby to be "efficient" at the breast when her 
baby was simply not ready to be "efficient".

When mother and baby have an established healthy feeding relationship, then the baby is more 
"physiologic" at the breast and it can be more "psychologically rewarding".  When that is not 
occuring, the pump can be an "efficient" means of increasing milk removal to reestablish a healthy 
"physiologic" and "psychologically rewarding" feeding relationship.

But faced with a school chancellor who wrote a two page letter that was all about testing our 
children using terminology that suggested our children were pawns in a war game, instead of 
individuals to be nurtured in their learning process, I am becoming aware of how the term of 
"efficiency" really should be reserved for machines and not humans.

Best, Susan

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