Breast pumps

I'm going to b returning to work in the next month or two and want to leave EBM for Kaela, who is now 2mos. I have only ever expressed by hand before but it takes a long time and given her age, I'll need to express more than a feed a day. The time cost is also an issue (today I expressed just 100ml in 15mins lol.)

I can basically name my hours at work. I'm thinking of expressing one or two feeds in the morning and cming home for a feed/express at lunchtimes.

What do you recommend? I'm thinking of going for something like this Medela handpump. It seems that hiring for a month vs buying would cost about the same, so I might as well buy it in that case. Would you consider buying s/hand, e.g. off TradeMe, and if so what would you look for to see if it has been looked after/cleaned well? How long does expressing take, as a rough idea?


ETA: What about this?

Edited by busymum

I got mine 2nd hand from someone on ohbaby and it was seriously fine to use. I just sterilised it a couple of times and that was it.

If you want a breast pump mine has been sitting in storage in our garage for months. It's an electric avent isis uno. It was awesome while I was using it. Took about 10mins to get a feed maybe... I wasn't really timing cause I did it while watching tv lol

I got mine off TM and just used the steriliser on it and it was good to go. Although it has pretty much died now so I'll need a new one for this baby.

From what I understand expressing in the morning boosts your milk supply plus you get more in the morning so definitely I would express at least one then if you have time.

Maybe also one before you go to bed? Easy if you're watching TV and baby is asleep.

The only thing to bear in mind is that as your baby gets better at sucking the breast pump won't express as much as the breast is used to the more efficient baby. (assuming you do equal or more BF's than expressed) Plus she'll want more of it too.

I started out a milk machine - able to express 120ml in 7 minutes and by the time I gave up expressing (and just stuck to the BFing) I was only managing to get out 100ml in about 40min. My supply hadn't dropped just the pump wasn't as strong as Rowan and my breasts had adapted to her.