When I attended Lamaze classes during my first pregnancy, the doula happened to mention that the most convenient way of pumping is latching the baby on one breast and expressing the other breast AT THE SAME TIME. It sounded ridiculous to me. Fast-forward a few months later our baby girl came, and it was impossible to implement that advise. I brushed it off and assumed that she was even joking. I had a manual pump and tried to use it a few times and I thought it was too much work. A friend lent me her single electric breast pump and it served me well, and I put a lot of pressure on myself to buy one though never got to do it. I would pump one breast and then the other when I felt engorged, or just before feeding the baby to prevent a forceful let-down. I prided in the stash of white gold I was slowly accumulating for my baby’s future. I was determined to make it to 6 months of exclusive breastfeeding. And when my milk supply dwindled, as has always been the case when I go back to work, I only made it to 5¾ months. So close yet so far.
I observed that, when expressing, the most important thing and unfortunately what took longest was to stimulate the let-down, and because I pumped one breast at a time, I felt that I was not optimizing. Getting a double electric best pump would be a good idea, but too expensive. However, the easiest, quickest, best and most effective method of stimulating a perfect and relaxed let-down is when the baby is suckling. Also, I felt worn out from trying too hard to make extra time to express when the baby was sleeping during the day and at night. Sometimes I woke up at night to express. I felt that it deprived me of rest and was just way too cumbersome. It was well worth it, but just too much effort. So with baby number two, I resorted to not trying too much, it’s never that serious anyway. I hardly expressed any milk. And when my supply dwindled, I defaulted to formula, which turned out to be an expensive affair. I only ended up doing about 4½ months of exclusive breastfeeding.
By the time baby number 3 came, I only had my old manual pump. I decided to try expressing every time the baby was feeding, since I had a natural let-down anyway. At first it was difficult to learn to hold the baby in one hand and pump with the other, but with determination I quickly learned to work it, and I winged it like a pro. I was shocked at the generous amounts of milk I was able to express in one go. It would average 250ml every single time. Previously I would express 2-3 times a day with an average of 100ml, but with the new method I was able to express as many times as the baby fed, which would be a minimum of 6 times a day, and WITHOUT MAKING EXTRA TIME. My stash of white gold grew so fast that I filled my freezer with over 50 litres of breast milk by the time I went back to work. For the first time, I hit the 6-months target and when my supply dwindled, I still had more than enough!
Related articles
1. Childbirth Education classes
