Confessions of a Breastfeeding Purist

by Nancy Mohrbacher, IBCLC

When I began working with breastfeeding families in 1982 as a La Leche League Leader, I considered breast pumps and other breastfeeding devices at best unnecessary and at worst potential sources of breastfeeding problems. The ideal nursing relationship, I believed, consisted of a mother and baby, end of story.

First-hand experience with mothers and babies in special situations who used good-quality equipment to establish and maintain breastfeeding broadened my perspective considerably. But it was only recently that I shed my final prejudice.

A close friend of mine, another La Leche League Leader, had been following my experiences as a new rental station. I told her about the premies whose mothers maintained their supplies by pumping. I told her about babies with latch-on problems whose mothers pumped until their babies got the hang of nursing. I told her about mothers who wanted a good rental pump to make it easy to provide their babies with their milk while they worked or went about their busy lives.

One day my friend, who was now expecting her sixth baby, said, "I've decided that when this baby is born, I'd like to have a rental pump to keep myself comfortable. I know from breastfeeding my other five that I tend to have an oversupply of milk, and I've decided there is no reason I should suffer if a pump could make the early weeks easier."

I presented my friend with an Ameda/Egnell Lact-E rental pump on loan as a gift the day she gave birth and offered it for her use for as long as she liked. As she predicted, when her milk increased on the third day, it came in with a vengeance and she again had an oversupply. At first she pumped several times a day, just long and often enough to stay comfortable. Over the coming weeks she felt the need to pump less and less often, until at about three weeks her milk supply was in sync with her baby's needs.

When she returned the pump to me, she expressed her satisfaction. "This is the first time I've breastfed a newborn without having lumps up to here," she said, motioning toward her chin. "Pumping before nursings made it easier for the baby to latch on. Pumping between nursings kept me from feeling full. I had no discomfort from fullness--for the first time ever."

My friend didn't save any of her pumped milk. She never intended to give a bottle. The pump's only effect on breastfeeding was to make it more comfortable for her and her baby.

Hearing my friend's experience convinced me that it was time to revise my view of the ideal breastfeeding relationship. I began by asking myself some questions. Would there have been any virtue in my friend suffering through her early weeks of breastfeeding without a pump? None that I could think of. Had the pump interferred in any way with breastfeeding? Far from it. These answers led me to a new outlook in which the ideal breastfeeding relationship, in addition to a mother and baby, may also include a good pump.