Valerie - I just wanted to say that I agree with your sentiments. I am still very new to this field and am currently in training to be a breastfeeding peer counsler at our local hospital, but I do have personal experience in 'milk harvesting'. For the first 2 months of my sons life I did nothing but pump and bottle feed him, not neccessarly because of a serious medical issue like you described, but because I was ill informed regarding some standard bfing issues that can arise. I saw pumping as my ONLY way to continure feeding my son my milk, which was very important to me. Believe me when I say it was very time consuming and heartbreaking, but I stuck to it and thank goodness I did, because otherwise I would not still be bfing him now (at 16 months and pg!). Luckily my son had other plans, and decided to go back to my breast with ease and no help from anyone - boy was I lucky. During that time I considered almost daily switching to formula, but knowing I was 'breastfeeding' really made me stick to it, I knew I was doing the best I could at the time to feed and nurture my baby the best way possible. This is the case for some women, I subscribed to pumpmoms and the support there was unbeliveable, and they were actually the ones who kept encouraging me to try putting him back to the breast. As a mother who does breastfeed, sometimes it just feels like sometimes nothing is good enough - whether it be co-sleeping, pumping, weaning. Obvioulsly we all want the same thing - for babies to be breastfeed by their mothers and for mothers to know the benifits and want to breastfeed - but I feel when we start getting into the tecnicalities of who is doing it the 'right way' or the 'better way' we are losing our objective. This will other turn mothers away, not bring them in. Going back to learning mode Grace O'Connor IBCLC wannabe, Bfing peer counsler, Nursing mother to Ethan (16 months) and due with #2 in April. *********************************************** 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