Many babies entering NICUs have poor prognosis's BUT that is not to say that they don't improve or survive. I work in one of Australia's largest neonatal intensive care nurseries and many of our babies are rated as critical from the word go but do end up going home .Some of them have extremely poor prognosis's either from a congenital/prematurity etc viewpoint but if a mother wishes to express even when it is only going to be a short time we never discourage them. This is at least one thing they have control over when they have a baby in NICU ,it's something they can contribute towards their baby's care. I can remember quite a few babies just recently that developed wings and became little angels or went home for a short period before doing the same thing.The majority of these mums expressed ,it helped them to deal with the other problems they were facing because of their baby's prognosis/condition.It simply felt right to them. One mum expressed for months before her precious little one finally said enough was enough ,she had heaps of frozen milk in our freezer that we had to throw away afterwards which I found hard to do when I recalled all she had gone through in obtaining this milk for her baby. This mum appreciated the fact that we never told her to give up because her baby wasn't going to make it and supported her in her wish to continue expressing even when it was obvious the baby was just waiting for her parents to say it was all right to say good-bye. We are very pro breastfeeding in our unit and support whatever mum wishes to do , it is not our place to tell a mother not to express , that is their personal decision. Anne clements RN EM BNS Brisbane,QLD Australia *********************************************** 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