Hi Karleen
The research of Peter Hartmann's PhD students has kept us all on our toes
and constantly thinking about how to apply their research to our practice,
and how our practical experience is reflected in their research.  Have you
read the research of Donna Ramsay - she is another of his PhD candidates
and is the one doing all the ultrasound studies on the breast.  She has
documented that milk moves down from the alveoli during milk-ejection, is
available for 2 or 3 minutes or so, then what hasn't been removed moves
back up to the alveoli again.  So, while milk removal is essential for milk
synthesis, milk ejection is essential for pump or baby to remove the milk.

I guess in your case you could ask whether you were able to stimulate as
many MERs as the pump did;  or maybe whether you were able to get as much
milk out by hand expressing in the time that it is available for removal.

I have great faith in hand expressing.  As a student midwife back in 1979
we had one huge old pump in our NICU, the Clements I think it was, that was
very rarely used, and when it was it made such a noise that everyone stared
- not conducive to MERs!!  Our mothers would all hand express 3-hourly
around the clock and provide all the milk their babies needed.  And I am
aware that the majority of the world's mothers don't have access to any
pumps at all, and yet provide expressed milk for their babies too.
I'm not advocating that we return to those times - heck, a double electric
pump has got to be so much easier - but hand expressing is another
effective method of milk removal.

Denise

*************************************************
Denise Fisher MMP, BN, IBCLC
BreastEd Online Lactation Studies
http://www.health-e-learning.com

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

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

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(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html