How Your Breast Pump Can Set You Free

Tanya, another breastfeeding mom of two boys, like myself submitted a guest post to talk about her experiences breastfeeding and how she could not live without her breast pump!  I can fully relate to her post and I think it is very valuable information for new mothers.  In fact, if you’d be interested in more information, I have written many articles about breastfeeding and pumping.

 Guest post: by Tanya

Two short months ago my husband I brought our 2nd child; Fletcher home from the hospital. Oh how the time just flew by. Only last week I attended my first mother’s club meeting and the other mothers I spoke to all agreed that the time just disappears when you’re spending every moment watching your little one grow and change every day. In fact, there were so many different things we had in common, and similar stories that we shared about our babies.

There was one thing however, that seemed to vary greatly from mother to mother… Breastfeeding. Two of the mother’s I spoke with, both younger, first time mom’s, told me just how much they loved breastfeeding their babies, and how easy they found it compared to some of the horror stories their friends had shared.

Another mom mentioned that her young one hadn’t taken to the breast at all due to being premature and dropper fed formula, while waiting for her milk to come in. She was dead against formula feeding and was desperately trying to express enough milk for her daughter each day. I enquired as to how she was expressing and she told me she had been doing it by hand so far, but was considering buying a pump. Having used a breast pump regularly after the birth of my first child I was shocked that she’d spent the past two months trying to express by hand.

After the birth of our first child I found it took a little longer for my milk to fully come in than it does for most women, and a good friend recommended I purchase a breast pump in order to help boost my supply. Her advice was a gift from heaven. Within a week of using my pump my breasts were regularly engorged and I found I had more than enough milk for baby. I also found that he was much more settled and sleeping better than ever. In the following weeks however, I found I no longer needed to keep expressing so the pump sat at the bottom of the kitchen cupboard.

It wasn’t until my son was about 3 months old that I started to try and get my social life back on track but I found it very difficult trying to balance friends, family and baby. My husband worked long hours at the office, but was always more than happy to share some time with his son when I wanted to go out for coffee with the girls. Whenever I knew I was going to be out of the house for more than a couple of hours I would get out my trusty Medela breast pump and express enough milk to keep him going until I got back.

As much as I love spending time with my boys, any mom will tell you that sometimes you just need a break away from it all and my breast pump really helped give me that freedom.

At the 5 month mark I had decided to return to work, although this time at reduced hours. Again the breast pump gave me the freedom to build up a solid milk supply so my mother in law could watch our boy 3 days a week. I couldn’t even begin to count up all the hours that having a good breast pump has saved me over the past 2 years. Without it my life would have been very different to say the least. Today I enjoy a great balance between social life, work life and family life and I couldn’t be happier.

In fact, I love my breast pump so much that my husband helped me build a website dedicated to Breast Pump Reviews, which I’ve been busy working on the past 8 months. You can visit my site at BreastPumpReviewSite.com

Tagged as: Breastfeeding, breastpump, pumping

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