No matter how well you plan, life sometimes throws you a curve ball. Throughout her pregnancy, Stephanie Casemore of Ontario, Canada, planned to breastfeed her son. When he was born nine weeks premature, Casemore faced challenges she never imagined. Like many preemies, her son couldn't directly breastfeed at first.

Casemore, now the author of Exclusively Pumping Breast Milk (Gray Lion Publishing, 2004), found herself stuck in an endless cycle of breastfeeding, bottle-feeding expressed milk to "top off" her son and pumping. By the time she was done with one round, it was time to start over again. "I have heard many mothers say that this cycle took over their world and wore them down to the point that a change had to be made in order to manage other aspects of life requiring their attention," she says.

Casemore's situation isn't unusual for mothers of preemies, as well as some full-term babies who have feeding difficulties at birth. While many of these mothers are able to transition to fully breastfeeding, for others like Casemore, the circumstances are so overwhelming that mothers choose to bottle-feed in order to save their sanity. Casemore didn't want to feed her son formula, so she chose to exclusively pump.

Giving breast milk in a bottle long-term is indeed possible, according to Judy Crouthamel, an international board-certified lactation consultant (IBCLC) with the Breastfeeding Alliance, Inc. Often, a mom just won't have the time to work with a baby on transitioning to the breast. "This may not be the only child a mom has," she says. "It may be easier to take 20 minutes to pump and feed the baby than spend up to an hour trying to get the baby to latch and then have to pump anyway."

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