Sandy,

Is this mom going to be doing her mission work with friends that she is very
comfortable with? If someone is willing to take the place of the electric
pump, there is a way to do it. I have access to L--t--a pumps that are owned
by the district WIC program, but don't always have one immediately available.
Since this pump is a mechanism that pulls on a hand pump connected to tubing,
it works if someone operates the hand pump. It allows double pumping. I have
had some parents use this method when traveling. It can be tiring for the
person operating the pump, but it works OK if the woman doesn't mind having
another person around while pumping.

If the mom can learn to hand express, that is another possibility. My
daughter is almost 16 years old. At that time, pump selection was quite
limited. I was able to collect milk pretty efficiently when I went back to my
job. Several other women I know also went back to a job outside the home and
expressed the milk directly into the bottle. (The skill of hand expression
comes in handy when moms fear that they do not have any milk or the baby
needs a taste of milk to help him latch on. After asking permission, of
course, I express a few drops of the mom's colostrum.)

Since she is going to be away from her baby for a week, storing milk doesn't
appear practical, so pump and dump sounds like what she'll be doing, unless
there is some other use for her milk. As far as storage of pumped milk, there
has been some research done on the microbial count of milk stored at room
temperature. I remember hearing that the bacterial count decreases after 30
minutes, but don't remember when it begins to rise. There are also the
questions of What is room temperature in Haiti? and What facilities are
available for cleansing hands and storage containers?

So much for my .02

Becky