I am working with a mother who became pregnant when her exclusively breastfed baby was 4 months old. She is now 6 months pregnant and her daughter is 10 months old. Shortly after becoming pregnant she noticed a significant decrease in her milk supply, but she continued to nurse her baby 2-3 times per day, while supplementing with formula, and after 6 months, with solids. As of last week, the infant refused to breastfeed. The mother was hoping to continue breastfeeding throughout the pregnancy and then to tandem nurse. I gave her all of the usual suggestions for how to handle a nursing strike, and explored with mom her reasons for wanting to continue breastfeeding. She said she is primarily interested because she is not yet ready to give up the bonding that breastfeeding achieves. Mom thinks that the baby won't nurse because of severely decreased milk supply. She asked if she could use a breastpump to increase her supply so that she might rekindle her baby's interest in breastfeeding. I told her that pumping might pose a risk to her pregnancy. Does anyone have any research about the impact of pumping or hand expression on pregnancy? What would you think is the difference between breastfeeding and pumping during pregnancy? Why would it be safe to continue breastfeeding, but not safe to use a breastpump? What if she limited her pumping to the 2-3 times per day that her baby would ordinarily be nursing, to help maintain whatever supply she might still have until the baby might stop her nursing strike? ============================================ Ellen A. Steinberg, RN, LCCE, IBCLC E-mail: [log in to unmask] *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html