susan@varian.UUCP (Susan Finkelman) (08/21/84)
I would like to hear from those of you who have or are succesfully breast feeding & working away from home. Do you have suggestions about breast pumps? How long did (or are you planning) to continue breast feeding? Do you supplement with formula during the day? Thanks, Susan Finkelman
andrew@orca.UUCP (Andrew Klossner) (08/23/84)
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"I would like to hear from those of you who have or are
succesfully breast feeding & working away from home. Do you
have suggestions about breast pumps? How long did (or are you
planning) to continue breast feeding? Do you supplement with
formula during the day?"
My wife went back to work when our daughter was six weeks old. She
pumps her breasts at work, stores the milk in bottles in a
refrigerator, then brings them home and takes them to the baby sitter
the next day. We have not yet had to use formula.
We found that the standard model breast pump, with a squeeze bulb on
one end, doesn't work very well at all. We use a model which consists
of two concentric cylinders with a tight gasket between them. When you
draw the inner cylinder out of the outer, it creates a very effective
partial vacuum. We had to go to a pharmacy to buy this. Availability
information can probably be had from a chapter of La Leche League, an
organization whose primary focus is the promotion of breastfeeding.
Something to watch out for is that most breastfed babies don't take to
the bottle right away. We made a point of feeding our baby from a
bottle once a day from the time we brought her home. (This had the
additional benefit of allowing Dad to feed the baby.) Baby sitters are
wary about accepting babies who haven't yet become accustomed to a
bottle, as the process can be frustrating for all involved.
-- Andrew Klossner (decvax!tektronix!orca!andrew) [UUCP]
(orca!andrew.tektronix@rand-relay) [ARPA]mcs@we53.UUCP ( M. C. Stillman ) (09/11/84)
Susan, I tried to mail this reply, but couldn't get it through to you, so here's some information for you. I breastfed my baby till he was nine months old (he quit on his own-- decided that the bottle was easier--also, by then he had several teeth and had a tendency to chew--didn't like it when i pulled him off). I went back to work (full-time) when he was six weeks old. Since I would be pumping milk often (twice a day--after a lot of practice, i'd get 8 or so ounces in the morning and around 6 in the afternoon), the La Leche League member I talked with recommended the LAPUCO pump. I was very satisfied with the results. I think I could get more milk with it, and it was reasonably simple to use (once I got used to it). It was a little more expensive (around $30, as i remember) but well worth the price to me and my little one. Pumping twice a day was easier since I had a reasonable supervisor and a very supportive medical department (they let me use a vacant examining room for pumping and let me store the milk in their refrigerator until the end of the day). DON'T BE DISCOURAGED. When I first started pumping, I could only get a few drops. My husband couldn't believe that breastfeeding would ever work. It really does take practice and patience. Adam was a little hog and the two bottles I pumped during the day were not enough for him (he didn't start solids till he was six months old). So we did supplement with an 4oz bottle of formula during the day (at the sitter's). That worked out nicely because we could hide his vitamins in that bottle (since he gagged, coughed, and choked like crazy whenever we tried to give them to him-- credit my husband for that suggestion). One other thing--one of the nurses in medical (a strong La Leche League-er) said that adding an ounce (or so) of water to the pumped milk (occasionally) wouldn't hurt. So I always rinsed out the container with a little water to get as much as I could. And I drank lots of liquids during the day (I found that drinking two cups of milk a day drastically increased my production, and I normally don't drink milk). Good luck! Mary Stillman (we53!mcs) AT&T Technologies, Inc. St. Louis, MO.