Pump up the jam

There is a lot of unsolicited advice thrown at you when you have a newborn.  It starts when you are pregnant and seems like it just might continue on until the kids are 18.  Or maybe forever.

The BAD thing with all this free advice, is what works for one person, may not work for YOU.   Such as, whoever told me to pump in between feedings, is FIRED!

The GREAT thing about all this free advice, is that SOME of it WILL work.  Such as the woman who told me to try pumping WHILE breastfeeding.  Bingo!

You see, the first time I turned on the pump and put those alien looking contraptions on my boobs, I was afraid.  Afraid they were going to rip my nipples right off.  Or worse, suck the whole boob down it’s tube.  (I warned you about all the boob talk).

I followed all the directions in the booklet, reading it three times and sterilizing everything in boiling water like it said.  I placed the alien contraptions on my boobs and turned the dial up to 1.  OUCH!  It hurt!  I sat there with this pump pulling my boob like a cow, the grinding sound of the machine adding to the horror and thinking, THIS is definitely one of THE most ridiculous things I’ve ever done.  How ridiculous did I look sitting there with my shirt off, holding 2 plastic alien contraptions to my boobs, hooked up to a machine?  (No, there will be no pictures of this.)  And after about 10 minutes of this ridiculous, self inclicted pain, all I got was ONE drop.  ONE DROP!!  Great, $250 down the drain.

I was sure I must have done something wrong.  But what?  I made a “pump session” appointment at a cute, local baby store.  I can’t believe “pump sessions” exist, but this told me I wasn’t alone.  Others had sought help on these ridiculous alien contraptions too.  Another $50 later, all she said was that I’d done everything right, it just takes some women longer than 10 minutes to get the milk flowing.

Well, she was partly right.  I later found that a way to get the milk flowing, is to trick the body into thinking it’s a BABY pumping for that milk, NOT a plastic alien.  “Have a picture of your baby with you.  Visualize him on your breast.”

Well, even better than a picture of my baby, was to put my baby on one boob, and the plastic alien on the other.  It worked like a charm!  One measly drop turned into 4.5 ounces.  So I guess it sort of works for us women like it does the guys when it comes to pumping out any donations.  We just need a magazine of half naked babies.