A customer recently asked me this question, which I thought might be useful for others.
“I’m looking at returning to work once baby is 3 months old for about 3-4 days a week, I just wondering what breast pump you would recommend for that. Also would you recommend buying or hiring which do you think is better. ”
The type of breast pump that you need really depends on how often you plan to use it each day. If you are going to be working about 3-4 days per week when your baby is around 3 months old, then you’d probably be looking at using the breast pump about 3 times per day.
We recommend an electric breast pump, the manual breast pumps are really only designed to be used about once per week, like if you are going out for a night.
In terms of the electric pumps, either the Avent Electric, or the Medela Swing will be suitable.
Bare in mind the Medela Mini Electric , is very noisy. This is quite an important thing to consider, especially if you are using it at work. We’ve made some demo videos on our website so that you can hear the noise they make. Both of those models of breast pumps are designed to be used about once or twice per day, any more often than that and the motor wont be able to handle it.
So we recommend the Swing or the Avent Electric for you. These are both very quiet pumps, and yet very quick and efficient at working. (which is also another thing to consider, cos you’ll be needing to express in your work breaks).
The difference between the Swing and the Avent Electric: The swing has a two phase method so that it quickly stimulates milk let down, and then you push a button and it goes into a longer slower motion, just like how a baby sucks.
The Avent Electric, you start pumping manually at a rate that suits you, and when its comfortable and milk is coming out, you push a button and the pump continues pumping at this speed for you. This pump also has the option to be able to used as a manual pump (which the Swing doesn’t).
We recommend only hiring a pump if you really need to (eg, premature or sick baby or another reason where full-time pumping is necessary). Mothers that need to hire the Symphony Breast Pump do so because they have either been advised by midwife or lactation consultant, they may have been using one already in hospital, prem baby and feeding difficulties perhaps. It can often work out more economical to purchase a breast pump rather than hiring anyway.
