Expressing Milk

I was going to do these in some kind of chronological order, but a bit stuck on what to do next I'm jumping ahead to put together a how-to on expressing milk as it seems to be a common problem for many moms.

The real key to expressing milk with ease is ensuring that you get a let-down. There are two ways to do this; you can buy a very expensive electric pump that has two-stage pumping in order to simulate what your baby does to get a let-down, or you can use a manual pump. Cheap electric pumps are a waste of money. I bought the most expensive pump I could find (Medela PumpInStyle double electric with bells, whistles and a nifty backpack to carry them all in) and it cost less than 3 months' supply of formula. Well, the bags probably cost another 3 months' worth of formula but I could've used bottles and either way, over a year into the pumping game, I'm ahead.

Without sounding too much like a Medela sales rep, I have to say I really am a huge fan of my PumpInStyle. I have pumped a phenomenal volume of milk with it, and the motor is still going strong. I have donated 9 and a half gallons plus the shipment that was destroyed, and that's not counting what Johnny drank, which admittedly wasn't much for about 6 months. Some crude math tells me I've pumped somewhere on the order of 3,500 ounces or 25 gallons or 100 litres, rounding off.

Well it's lovely that my Medela, with it's let-down-inducing two-stage fanciness works great, but what about doing it with a manual pump? Well the trick is that you have to do what the PumpInStyle does. I suppose you have to do what the baby does, which is what the PumpInStyle tries to simulate, but it's a lot easier to learn from the PumpInStyle. I've heard that you can put your finger under your baby's chin to feel the pre-let-down rhythm, but I've tried that and it's not very easy to do.

I'm full of anecdotes and to spare you all the parenthetical hell I'll just abruptly start a new paragraph. I learned the other day that when doing CPR, it is now the accepted standard that, if someone is in cardiac arrest (not to be confused with respiratory arrest, where they stop breathing before keeling over), you no longer do mouth-to-mouth. The recommendation now is just to do chest compressions, as the blood moves so slowly when doing chest compressions that it's still pretty well saturated with oxygen and the stopping to do the breathing was doing more harm than good. Stick that in your back pocket for next time you're on the Waterloo-and-City Line, but keep this part in your pump bag: the tempo for chest compressions, and for stimulating a let-down, is 100 beats per minute, or the beat of the BeeGees' Staying Alive.

When it comes to pumping, brute force is not going to be any help at all but will almost certainly cause you pain. When you start out, hum along to Staying Alive and keep the beat with your pump handle. Within about 60 seconds you should have a let-down. If not, go a little faster. Those of you who have an mp3 player might want to make a 10-minute track to pump to, starting with a 60 second techno 100 or 120 bpm track and followed by some nice, relaxing 60 bpm rendition of Row, Row, Row Your Boat (I am partial to the Stephen Fry/Hugh Laurie version from Blackadder Goes Forth) for those of you who need to focus on your little one to keep the milk flowing.

Once you achieve let-down, the milk should start spraying. If it has been a while since you've pumped, you may find that you have to do very little. If I'm engorged I can pump once every 3-5 seconds initially. Once the fore milk is gone, you have to work a little harder (1 second long pumps) to get the hind milk out. A little breast compression with your free hand will prevent hand cramp in the pumping hand.