Hi all It has never occured to me that I should suggest to mothers not hand express colostrum during pregnancy. The are several reasons why. Firstly - colostrum is best hand expressed. It is my understanding that pumping is very inefficent way to express colostrum. Hand expressing results in far more colostrum. After baby is born, if they are not going and suckling at the breast for any reason, we always hand express where I am Secondly - the idea of starting contractions due to expressing makes no sense to my way of thinking. Mother's who end up tandem feeding up to birth and beyond do not have premie babies unless it was going to happen anyway. Another way to put it is that breastfeeding an older baby/toddler or hand expressing colostrum is not the reason for premie babies anymore than tandem feeding the cause of miscarriage. Thirdly - why was this mum experiencing pain in the early days of feeding? What was the attachment like? What were the labour interventions that resulted in baby being unable to attach or suckle effectively? What were the baby issues that resulted in poor attachment - tongue tie? Palate problems etc? Does mum have issues with breastfeeding that need to be explored e.g. Rape or abuse, low pain thresh holds etc? It would be interesting to see what the difference in blood oxytocin levels are between hand expressing colostrum pre birth, orgasm in the late stages of pregnancy and oxytocin levels in labour. We know that the the baby actually initiates labour - but I do not know of studies that look at the trends of oxytocin during labour e.g. How much oxytocin is at the beginning, and end - if and when are there surges in oxytocin? Ruth Fiedler 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 email list is powered by LISTSERV (R). There is only one LISTSERV. To learn more, visit: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html