I have to agree with Gonneke who, now that I think about it, is the first person I remember 
mentioning thoroughly draining the breast for oversupply even before I was shaking my head in 
disbelief at Christina Smilie's talk.  I was the disruptive influence in the back of the room 
whispering "how can that be, its just going to increase the supply even more" to Dr. Mona Gabbay, 
who gently set me straight.  It is a scary thing to do - drain and oversupplier's breast thoroughly.  
My record is 16 ounces.  My colleague I think had a woman drain out 21 ounces at one sitting.  I 
don't know how many miserable oversuppliers I have helped by judicious use of thorough draining 
coupled with one sided feeding of various periods of time.  The last time I talked to Dr. Gabbay on 
this topic (probably over six months ago), she had not had to resort to any sort of medications to 
tamp down the supply with this technique.

I am still unsure if adopting this technique accounts for the drop in mastitis I have seen among 
oversuppliers I have helped or if its just a fluke of circumstance whereby this year there are less 
tenacious bacteria in the hospitals.  

It does seem to help the babies that "lap" milk off those oversuppling breasts to learn to pull milk 
from the breast in the same way that you can sometimes see a shift in a baby that has been fed via 
reclined bottle feeding that is shifted to paced upright bottle feeding or to a Haberman bottle.  

Thank you Gonneke for mentioning this technique even though it took me probably a year after 
your posting to dare to try it out.

Best regards, 

Susan Burger

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