Nancy writes: My only concern is that some
women will do it correctly, others not so well - will we be compromising
potentially good milk supply if a Mom does it incorrectly?  Some Moms also are
hesitant to touch their own breasts so aggressively, whereas pumping with a
mechanical device seems more culturally acceptable!

This is a very real concern Nancy. Many mothers are very hesitant to touch
their own breasts and I also find that hand expression takes a bit more practice
than a lot of moms are willing to put in. Unfortunately, also, some of the
mothers we work with are not able to express even a drop of colostrum by hand or
electric pump for several days. I'm afraid these moms would get very
discouraged with hand expression for 15 minutes with no result, but are willing to
mindlessly use the electric pump.  We're also very concerned about compromising
milk supply, so provide a hosp. grade pump early post partum to our moms who
are separated from their babies. I'm sure some combination of manual expression
and hosp. grade pump  would be the most effective, but we compromise to get
the best result we can. I would love to see a study comparing the two but we'd
have to be very careful to make sure the hand expression was done correctly. It
would also be interesting to see how much time it takes to teach effective
manual expression to nurses and mothers v the amount of time it takes to get a
mother to use the electric pump correctly. No flames, please. In the real world
of short staffing these things matter.

Kathy Boggs, RN, IBCLC

             ***********************************************

To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail
To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest)
To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
All commands go to [log in to unmask]

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