News Release 18-Jul-2011 Manual breast milk expression better than breast pump for poor feeders Randomized trial comparing hand expression with breast pumping for mothers of term newborns feeding ...

The mums were randomly assigned to either 15 minutes of using a breast pump or 15 minutes of manual breast milk expression in a bid to encourage their babies to breastfeed.

Expressing breast milk by hand in the first days after birth is better for boosting breastfeeding rates among poorly feeding newborns than the use of a breast pump, indicates a small study.