my mother (who breastfed three of us into over 97% babies with late solids in the 1960's) talks about the public health nurse coming to help her "strip" her breasts when she had double sided mastitis in the first month. from her story and teh severity of symtoms I suspect it was intraductal rather tahn inter ductal (?) have I got that round the right way - its midnight here. She did find it helpful - a couple of times a day for about a week I think. Also I know of a very gentle non- interventionist LC who will help a mother do it once on rare occasions when engorgement isn't resolving by normal methods with good results. And it does seem that some judicious expressing on an involuting breast seems to speed the process at times.
Wyeth has been guilty in NZ of some 'beautiful' formula advertising with lovely baby photos. I even picked one up and started reading it before I knew what it was promoting ( S26) at my doctors. 
I really appreciated the thread (and responses) about breastfeeding and working. It did inspire me to get pumping! However one thing that was surprisingly helpful was that piece (?Cathy) about breast milk, breastfeeding etc in relationship to a milk bank. What struck me was what was important to me was maintaining breastfeeding with Jonathan when we were together, some pumping and him having EBM at childcare was a secondary benefit to maintain that goal. My strapping 6foot 3" 17 year old who was milk intolerant weaned (the first time) at eleven months so while I look at my nursing toddelrs and wonder how I could have thought he was big eneough I do feel confident that Jonathan can get enough nourishment without nursing during the day. I'm just sharing this for what its worth for those of you helping mothers returning to work make decisions, what are the priorities about breastfeeding that are important for them.Sonja LLLNZ

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html