Breast Feeding and Pumping – Attaining the Best of Both Worlds

(Last Updated On: February 1, 2015)

Thanks to Phllips Avent for supplying the Double Electric Pump to facilitate this review.

Anyone who tells you that breast feeding is easy, is lying. I’m being honest.  Is it worthwhile?  No question.  It is a journey that you take with your new baby that is rewarding but definitely takes patience & persistence!

I’m just over a month into my adventures as being a mom of three.  You’d think I would have every aspect of parenting down by this point, but I don’t and I am struggling to build a routine that works.  Am I far more comfortable in my journey than I was with my first?  Absolutely!

With both my older sons (ages 10 and 12), I pumped full time – no latching on.  Being a young first time mother, I gave up too fast when latching didn’t come easily.  I wish I hadn’t given up so easily but I did and resigned to exclusively pumping.   I thankfully was one of the people that had great supply through pumping and went to the full year!  I would pump both sides at a time 4x a day getting a total of 80 ounces.   I had way more than I ever needed.  It sure did make it easier to leave the kids with my husband as I never had to worry about running home to feed either of them.

I was determined to do it differently with my daughter.  I wanted to figure out how to do have the best of both worlds. I scoured the internet reading countless message boards looking for insight.  My hospital bag was packed – including a Phillips AVENT double electric pump, a pacifier and bottles.  I had felt my daughter sucking her thumb in the womb, crazy I know but the sensation was undeniable.  I could feel a soft rhythmic motion near her head, like hiccups but much softer and faster.  I’d then feel a movement of a limb in that area and it would stop.  Every ultrasound showed her hand near her head.  Mothers intuition, I just knew she was a thumb sucker – just like her mom.

Minutes after my daughter was born she latched on like a vacuum and started nursing.  I’m sure her thumb sucking helped her know how to latch on easily.  She also started sucking her thumb not long after nursing.  I knew it!  So I popped in one of my favorite pacifiers ever (the Phillips AVENT pacifiers), which both my older sons had used also.  The nurse gasped as I did that and said something about it causing latching issues.  I just looked at her with the confidence of a third time mom and said, “Nope, I got this.”  She was so calm in the hospital and all the nurses loved how it was easy to soothe her during shots and other times newborns get fussy.

Once in recovery I was determined to get my milk in as fast as possible to avoid the cries of hunger that many breastfed babies go through as the mom’s milk comes in.  I had my daughter latch on and nurse every 2-3 hours but while she was sleeping (which they do A LOT of the first few days), I would get out my Phillips AVENT electric pump for 20 minutes or so.

I had a fabulous nurse who was floored at how prepared I was.  She brought me two small feeding syringes to suction up and feed the expressed colostrum to my daughter.  My milk was fully in by the time she was three days old!  To this day we have never struggled with my milk supply or had to supplement her with formula and I credit that to day one getting my milk production jumpstarted.  I created a milk demand ahead of what she needed.

I received another more expensive double electric pump through my insurance and I have tried using that one.  The Phillips AVENT Double Electric pump time and time again gets more milk in a far shorter time period so I always prefer to use it.  The other one now sits unused.  The convenience of having access to the entire AVENT line just adds to why I love it so much!

I went out and bought the manual hand pump for times when I needed to express one side discreetly (fantastic for traveling when you may not have access to a power outlet).  I’m able to get the same about of milk in almost the same amount of time.  I frequently use this one when I pump in bed next to my sleeping husband, when I’m nursing the baby simultaneously, when I’m watching TV or (sorry friends!) talking on the phone so no one knows what I am up to…

At 6 weeks old my daughter is a champ, I can alternate (mid feeding) with a bottle, latch on and then when she is done she is ready for her pacifier!  I always have way more milk than she needs because of the extra pumping I do.

I can say beyond a doubt that a good breast pump can make or break your breast feeding journey and I can’t recommend the Phillips Avent Double Electric Pump enough!