Just jumping in to say that if you live somewhere without easily
available programmable electric breast pumps it is still possible to
bring in a good milk supply, also for premature babies.

One of the members of my local BF org group is grandmother to twins
born in week 30.  Her daughter had a strong aversion to machinery in
contact with her body and therefore hand expressed from the start.
From about day three she had enough for the babies and they were
exclusively breastfed or breastmilk-fed (mostly breast but sometimes
got expressed milk in bottles if mother was not there) for six months.
 Before her supply was deemed sufficient by the neos in our hospital,
they were given donor milk from our bank in addition to her colostrum.

It's probably a cultural thing, but very very few Norwegian women wax
so lyrical about breast pumps as the women whose testimonials are
posted on the pump manufacturer's websites. If they do need to use a
pump they do it out of necessity, and if they feel profiicient at hand
expression a lot of them prefer it.   I will concede that mothers who
need to express all their milk in order to get it into their children
usually end up pumping rather than manually expressing.  But those
whose need to express is time-limited, even if that time may be weeks,
not hours or days, frequently prefer to avoid contraptions and they do
fine.

It would be a shame if people who couldn't get the state-of-the-art
pump for mothers of premies started doubting whether their babies
could get enough breastmilk.  Yes, it's work, and yes, it requires
some initial learning, but it's not impossible.

Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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