Mothers’ Milk

For the large majority of children breastfeeding is right choice for feeding and nurturing. For some children direct breastfeeding is (as of yet) not possible. Mothers will have to express their milk for those children in order to be able to feed them. Milk expression can be done by hand, by a manual operated breast pump or an electric breast pump. Ohyama et al studied 11 women who alternated between manual and electric expressing for the first 48 hours after the birth of their premature babies. Hand expression yielde an average of 2 ml per session and electric pumping just above a half milliliter. These seemingly small amount fit just within the observation Santoro et al made in their study of milk intake of exclusively breastfeeding healthy term newborns. They had an average intake of 15ml (plus or minus 11ml) per day, had between 2 and 5 nursing session in each 8 our period and the amount per feeding did not increase over these first 24 hours. Morton c.s. found that mothers who combine manual techniques with electric pumping and found an increase in total milk volume in comparison to only electric pumping. Morton continued following the research subjects and found that mothers who had used hand techniques at least 5 times a day in the first 3 days yielded substantially more milk at 8 weeks (a mean of 829ml without and 955ml with hand techniques in the first days).
Ohyama M, Watabe H, Hayasaka Y: Manual expression and electric breast pumping in the first 48 h after delivery.  2010, 52(1):39-43
Walter Santoro W, Francisco Eulógio Martinez FE, Rubens Garcia Ricco RG, Salim Moysés Jorge SM: Colostrum Ingested during the First Day of Life by Exclusively Breastfed Healthy Newborn Infants. The Journal of pediatrics, 2010, 156(1):29-32
Morton J, Hall J, Wong RJ, Thairu L, Benitz WE, Rhine WD: Combining hand techniques with electric pumping increases milk production in mothers of preterm infants. J Perinatol, 2009, 29(11):757-764