It was only a matter of time until we started putting these two messages together, and the message is: I want my baby to have breastmilk, so I'm going to pump my breasts and my baby will have my breastmilk in a bottle. Naturally you can find out more online, and you can find the communities and websites where you'll find help and support by typing "Exclusive Pumping" into your search engine.

Why would you pump instead of feeding baby at breast?

Women make decisions based on lots of different kinds of information gathering. For instance, I decided to breastfeed because cow's milk made me really sick when I was a child (ask me about the taste of fresh goat's milk....). Second, I believed in doing things the natural way, and breastfeeding seemed so natural. And third - lucky me, I had a girlfriend with a two year old, and I knew she had nursed until her son was six months old. He was (and is!) a bright, good-looking, personable guy. So I decided to nurse my baby for six months. My mom (who lives far away) always gave me the same advice: "It's a good thing you live in Vermont and not here, you always did like to do things different." And I read "Nursing Your Baby: by Karen Pryor. I was hooked.

So there we have it: Breastfeeding is better for my baby than formula, it's natural, it makes beautiful children and people I know can do it. I can do it too, and I'm different so even though my family doesn't breastfeed, I do, and that is good. I can do this by the book.

When I became a La Leche League Leader and childbirth educator, and then a lactation consultant, I very quickly realized that other people made decisions based on their own life experience. Here's a couple of moms who decided to pump and feed breastmilk. (These are composite moms with fictional names, by the way.)

Susie had shopped carefully for a doctor. She found one - a male doctor - who was kind and gentle and helped her talk about the man who sexually abused her when she was a child, and made a plan with her for a good childbirth. Susie had a wonderful birth, a birth that she felt was very healing for her soul. But she was surprised by the feelings breastfeeding gave her, and unsettled by them. As soon as she got home, she called me to rent a pump. She pumped her milk for several months for her daughter. "I am so glad I can give her breastmilk, I know it's the best for her."

Tiffany's daughter was born early - 28 weeks. She spent months in the intensive care nursery, and Tiffany pumped for her daughter. The breastfeeding didn't go smoothly, not even when her favorite lactation consultant sat with her and helped. One look in her daughter's mouth would have helped you figure it out - the baby's palate developed with a groove, right where the tube was that delivered Tiffany's milk to her stomach. Tiffany continued to pump for a long time. And Tiffany's friend Kali pumped for her baby with a cleft palate, who couldn't get any suction at the breast.

Sandra had a high-powered job. She chose the day for her cesarean carefully, being sure she wouldn't go into labor and fitting it into her schedule so she'd be able to go back to work with minimal disruption of her professional life. "I'm just not going to have time to learn how to breastfeed, it's too hard, so I'm just going to pump. That way he'll get the best without me having to worry about anything." (Think about this mom's dilemma in light of this quote from Naomi Wolf's Misconceptions: Truth, Lies and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood.)

In America, where many women have to go back to work full-time after three months of unpaid leave, ordinary nursing rhythms are a prohibitive luxury. A talmudic proverb holds, "The cow needs to suckle as much as the calf needs to suck." The anguish many new mothers must feel, who want to nurse and yet must return to work, may be as much biological as it is psychological. Babies are biologically designed to nurse, of course, and new mothers are biologically oriented toward wanting to respond.

Mothers and babies who are nursing are like one continually interacting, merged organism." (pp. 268-269)

Is it just about the milk?

Breastfeeding is in fact about more than the milk. It's the default mode for feeding human infants: we are made to fall madly in love with our babies and to have an intense, almost visceral (and certainly very hormonal) love affair with them. That's not an advantage of breastfeeding - that's the way it's supposed to be.

Babies are supposed to nurse often and to wake sometimes during the night. The theory is that that's one reason why breastfed babies are less likely to die of SIDS - they don't drop into that deep, deep, never-awakened-from sleep. Babies are made to be healthy, and to have incredibly silky smooth touchable skin. And to smell so good you'd like to eat them up. And to have lovely wide smiles, because they've been expanding their palatal arches every time they eat.

So breastfeed your baby at the breast, whenever you can, for as long as you can, and if you can. If you must pump when you're away, spend time on weekends or in the evenings or at night getting back to normal, and know that will help your supply when you must pump.

Just pumping

If you find you must pump, and feed your milk via bottle, here are some ways to make it work and make it more enjoyable.

Feed the baby, not the freezer. Don't worry about having a big fat freezer full of milk. If you can make enough for the baby today, you will make enough tomorrow. On the other hand, be sure you're getting the most milk for your pumping. Be sure the flange fits well on your pump, all the connections are nice and tight, and the speed is right (slower might be better than faster!) and your pumping session is long enough. Sometimes you'll get another whole set of let-downs after the milk dribbles down the first time!

Try pumping hands-free. Many EPers say it changes their lives. You can get bras that will hold Medela pumps in place, or try a Whisperwear style pump that you can wear under your shirt. This way you can cuddle the baby (or eat, or read, or work on your Excel spreadsheets....) while you pump.

Take good care of yourself. Get support - try pumpmoms, mother-to-mother, EPers group at Yahoo. Don't let anybody imply you've taken the easy way out, this is not a simple way to mother. Give yourself a break!