> 10/6/09
> ------------------------------
> Marianne Vanderveen said “I am in need of one or more articles  
> showing that fulltime pumping is a risk factor for bf duration.”

I'm afraid I don't have any articles, but I have anecdotal evidence.

Basically exclusive expressing is very hard work.  Breastfeeding  
starts difficult, and time consuming, and gets easier.  Expressing  
starts difficult and gets harder.  A lot of mums choose to express  
because they feel it is more discrete, and while bottle feeding is  
more discrete, expressing most definitely isn't.  If you aren't  
confident going out and breastfeeding with a small amount of flesh  
showing and baby finishing quickly, you are never going to be willing  
to express in public, so you will feel very tied down.  Then there's  
the fact that it really does get harder, after a while it seems to  
take longer and longer to get the same amount of milk, mums refer to  
this as pump resistance.  The breasts just don't letdown for the pump  
as well as for the baby, and while a three month old baby can get  
enough milk in 10 minutes, a breast pump rarely can manage that.  Also  
for the breastfeeding mother it is more than just the milk, for the  
expressing mum it is all about the milk, so once baby starts solids,  
there is less reason to keep going.  I am a member of a list for  
exclusive expressers who express due to circumstances, rather than  
choice, these are mums who have breastfed other children for 2 or more  
years, or who desperately wanted to breastfeed their baby for 2 or  
more years, and very few of them manage to last 12 months.  Some keep  
going for ages, but these mums usually have babies with serious health  
issues.  One mum is still expressing for her 30 month old, who only  
drinks EBM, still doesn't eat solids, so she has incentive, most give  
up when their baby is onto solids, usually around 10 months.


Jenny Doncon
Breastfeeding Counsellor, Australia
EPed 26 months (read my weaning diary here: http://www.lrc.asn.au/forum/viewtopic.php?t=40015 
  and the rest of my story here: http://www.lrc.asn.au/forum/viewtopic.php?t=41257 
  )

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