Mothering Corner

I met a friend who’s pregnant and due by the end of March for lunch today. She’s surprised to see how quickly I lost my baby fat away, and be back to myself in 9 months. She asked was it yoga that made me lose all my weight, but it’s not. I told her it’s breastfeeding because Isabelle’s sucking all my fat away! LOL!

She asked me some questions about breastfeeding, and raised her concerns like “not enough milk” (I’ll write about this!), what to prepared, how frequent baby feeds, and etc. So, it’s a good chance for me to promote breastfeeding. But I’ve forgotten to ask if she’s bought a breast pump!!!

Breast pump is essential to breastfeeding, but some mothers prefer to express by hand. I have 3 sets of breast pumps. I used Avent ISIS when I was breastfeeding Justin, and it’s a manual pump. In my opinion, it’s very convenient as I could just pump anywhere, such as in the toilet (yes, I did that), storeroom, nursing room, or even in the car! I didn’t have to look for socket or batteries to operate the pump, and it’s not making lots of noises too. The surplus is, it promotes better let down and I got more milk with it than hand expressing.

However, the disadvantage of this pump is that I needed to press on it manually, and it’s really troublesome and tiring when I nurse and pump at the same time. Bear in mind that you’ll get more milk by nursing on one side and pumping on the other side simultaneously! I’ll share my experience on this next time.

Since the pump was yellowish after prolong sterilizing, I bought a new set of Avent ISIS when I was pregnant with Isabelle. During my third trimester, I went shopping for baby stuffs and came across Medela Mini Electric Pump. I’d never used an electrical pump, and wanted to try it out.

I got my milk will come out easier with the pump, but surprisingly, it’s not. I had to trial and error with the pressure setting to control the suction of the pump to induce better let down. After some time, I got used to it, and it became very convenient when I pumping and nursing at the same time. However, I tend to get lesser milk with Medela, as comparing to Avent. I’m not sure what the reason, or it’s probably happened to me only.

No matter what pump you buy, I’d advise you to learn how to do hand expressing too. You can get some pictures from breastfeeding.com to understand better on how it’s done.

I learned this from Mdm Tham, who preferred hand expressing that using the pump. Luckily I picked up this skill as I forgot to bring my pump along when I was back to my mum’s place and needed to pump some milk for storage. BTW, hand expressing is also convenient when I needed to release some milk from engorged breasts onto breast pads and disposed them, before nursing my newborn babies who had a hard time taking in engorged breasts with stronger let down.

Nonetheless, if you have any better breast pump you’d like to recommend, please drop a comment here.