>><< two Saturday Night Specials, one at the end of each arm. >> Dear Katherine, I always enjoy your wisdom and responses-this is one of the best!! BTW, this was the only way I ever got a bit of milk expressed!! Even while hospitalized for gallbladder surg(my son was 18 mos, I did better than with the hosp electric pump!!)<< I had a Mary Jane cylinder pump that I used with my first baby, before I learned to mellow out and just take him with me. It worked okay, but I often fooled with hand expression, too. My early efforts resulted in bright red, sore breasts as a result of the sliding and pressing I did........... when I finally figured out the Marmet technique, I got pretty good at it, though I needed it only infrequently by then. Then came my third born, who suddenly developed meningitis symptoms at 9 days of age. We landed in the hospital for a week, and though I stayed with her for the duration and nursed her, the IVs caused her to eat less and me to be engorged! So I asked for bottles to express my excess milk into. The staff offered to bring me a breastpump, which I tried to decline. They *insisted* that I would need it, overruling me, and went to retrieve it. Fine. In the time it took to bring the pump downstairs to the pediatric unit, I had the bottle filled with milk from manual expression. Just said to them, "I *told* you I could do this!" and they didn't bother me again. ;-) -Lisa Marasco, hand expression champion of Santa Maria, CA