On Wed, 5 May 1999, Patrica Young wrote:

> I think what you are seeing is:
> 1.dad (or someone else) wants to feed baby.- "feeding the baby" is a
> legitimate way to get to hold the baby in the US, otherwise you are
> "spoiling" it!
> 2.most moms are returning to work by 6 weeks :-(
> 3.pumps are readily available and considered a necessary BF accessory.  If
> you have it, why not use it?

> For better or worse, all are cultural influences :-(  Sincerely, Pat in SNJ

From my perspective as an actual mom, with my first, I pumped for
these reasons:

1) To have a stash in case of emergency (something that actually
   happened with my second)
2) Everyone told me I'd want to get away from the baby, and we had
   many offers to babysit when that happened, so I figured I'd better
   have some milk pumped for when that happened (strangely, that need
   to "get away from the baby" never arose until quite a bit after
   she wasn't a baby anymore)
3) After she started solids, I'd use my little hand pump to pull off
   about 2 ounces each morning.  I'd use that milk to mix with her
   food (she'd eat egg yolk mixed this way, but not straight)

2 and 3 are definitely cultural, and I won't be pumping for reason #2 this
time around, but I wish my second had been old enough for me to have built
a stash when I ended up in the emergency room when he was 4 days old.
Luckily, it turned out not to be very serious, and the emergency room
staff were very accomodating about allowing my husband to bring the
baby in with me while they worked on me, but had it been serious and
I ended up in surgery, we would have had no option but formula.  I
consider that a good enough reason to start a stash.

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