I'm just writing up some research and am somewhat puzzled by some mother's descriptions of how they came to have excess milk to donate to another mother. There were a significant number who said that they had excess expressed milk because they needed to pump to maintain their milk supply. I thought that this might be the first time this was described but, no, Osbaldiston, R. and L. A. Mingle (2007). "Characterization of human milk donors." Journal of Human Lactation 23(4): 350-357; quiz 358-361. also found a significant % of mothers donating to a milk bank who "had to pump to stimulate lactation" and these mothers were large volume donators. 
I'm very interested in people's experience with this phenomenon. I think that some of these mothers' beliefs about the need to pump may come from popular books which insert pumping into a breastfeeding mother's schedule for the purposes of ensuring that there is enough milk. I wonder how commonly LC and peer counsellors are seeing this and, have any of you come across a mother who needed to do such a thing to be able to breastfeed her baby- I can't think of a mechanism by which this would be necessary! Osbaldiston et al suggested that such women should be targeted as milk donors! Not my first thought for an appropriate response!
Karleen Gribble
Australia
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