It's a well-known fact that mother's milk is the best food for newborn infants. It is natural and has all the necessary nutrients that help protect the infant from many diseases and ensures proper growth.

But new mothers are sometimes not able to feed their child. For instance, if the child is born premature it cannot suck; or the mother may be too weak to nurse the baby; or she may not be able produce enough milk to meet the child's needs.

Such mothers can still 'breastfeed' using a breast pump, a device which has become extremely popular and common in the United States and elsewhere. A breast pump is used to express the milk, which can then be stored and used as and when the baby needs it. Today, in the US, almost 90 per cent of lactating mothers who want to breastfeed their babies are using the pump.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) actively supports breastfeeding and so does the American Academy of Paediatrics. "Breastfeeding is encouraged so much that some hospitals do not allow even a pacifier, they want only the mother's nipple to be used," says Dr Kirin Suri of Norwalk Hospital, Connecticut. "There has to be stimulation every three hours for milk to be produced in sufficient quantity for the baby. And if the baby cannot feed by itself for any reason, breast pumps are equally good."

The breast pump is a mechanical device that mimics the sucking movements of an infant and stimulates the mother to lactate and make more milk. It's like 'tricking' the body into feeling that a baby is sucking so that more milk is produced.

There are different types of pumps - manual and electrical. The Medela pump, created in 1961 by Olle Larsson in Zug, Switzerland, is the popular one these days. It can be battery or electricity operated and has two funnels that are placed over the mother's nipples. The pump apes the baby's sucking movements and milk is collected in bottles or sterilised plastic containers.

Pumped breast milk can be stored in a refrigerator for a day. If it needs to be kept for more than a week then it should put in a freezer. The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) feeds babies with pumped milk every three to four hours depending on their weight.

Priya, a first time mother, delivered a preemie. As the baby girl was just four pounds she was put in an incubator and tube-fed till she could develop the sucking-swallowing-breathing technique that full-term babies already know. Priya painstakingly collected even the first few drops of milk and fed it to the baby through a tube. She then 'pumped' regularly every three hours till the baby could breastfeed directly. "If she had not used the pump, the milk production would not have continued and it would have dried up," says Laura, the nurse at Norwalk Hospital. "Sometimes it would be embarrassing," recalls Priya. "Someone would walk in when I was doing that, but for the health of my child I persisted till normal supply and normal feeding could be done. And I am very happy and satisfied. No artificial formulas for my baby."

The primary users of the breast pump are women who wish to return to work without feeling guilty about not being there to breastfeed their kid. With the help of this device they can return to work, pumping the milk to be given by a caregiver later to the baby. A survey carried out by the US-based National Women's Health Resource Centre revealed that about 32 per cent new mothers gave up breastfeeding after seven weeks of the baby's birth because they had to return to work. It said that there was no privacy or time at the workplace for lactating mothers to express their milk. Mother complained that their offices had no proper policies for lactating women, some said they had inflexible schedules, while others complained of lack of refrigeration to store the breast milk.

Allison, an assistant marketing manager at Playtex, says, "Breast pumps primarily give moms the freedom they desire to balance home life with personal/work life. They allow the mom to be away from her baby, and yet provide it with the best start in life - breast milk."

But it's not only working mothers who use the pump for artificially breastfeeding their children. In case of engorgement, which can be painful and lead to breast abscesses (mastitis), if the newborn cannot suck all the milk to relieve it, the pump is a good alternative. Sometimes strong medication may prevent mother's milk from being given to the infant. In such cases, the 'pump and dump' method is used where the milk is expressed to keep up the supply but is thrown away as it is not safe for the baby to take it. Or if the mother needs some surgery she can store the breast milk till she is fully recovered.

La Leche League International, a strong advocate of breastfeeding, however, the views the usage of breast pumps with some caution. It believes that all mothers have the ability to breastfeed their baby, understanding that many moms have to overcome various challenges in their quest to breastfeed successfully.

According to Playtex, a majority of women in the U.S. choose to breastfeed - 75 per cent breastfeed their baby at birth. Asians (82 per cent), Hispanics (79 per cent) and Caucasians (76 per cent) have the highest initial rate of breastfeeding, with African-Americans showing the lowest rate (60 per cent). Worldwide, the overall rate of breastfeeding is 47 per cent, a sharp increase in the last 20 years.

August 4, 2007

By arrangement with WFS 

Images under license with Gettyimages.com

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