Episode 134 – How to Start Pumping as a Breastfeeding Mom

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

Welcome to the kids sleep Show podcast where we dive into the magical world of sleep, and all things parenting. Join us as we embark on a journey filled with expert advice, practical tips and heartwarming stories that will transform your little ones into sleep superheroes, and empower you to navigate the beautiful chaos of parenting. I’m your host, Courtney Zentz. And I’m on a mission to change how the world view sleep and provide accessible sleep coaching resources for all families to build healthy sleep habits in their home for children, and adults of all ages. As an award winning speaker, author and pediatric sleep expert, myself and my team of consultants work intimately with families around the world to teach healthy sleep habits to children and adults. I believe wholeheartedly that sleep is the foundation for which a happy home is built. So let’s sleep together. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the kids sleep Show podcast. It is World breastfeeding week. And we are covering all things breastfeeding this week here at Tiny transitions. And the podcast here is no different. today’s podcast is going to talk all about beginning to build a pumping relationship with that sweet little pump that will become your best friend if you are a nursing mom with a new baby, or perhaps you have one on the way. And you’re trying to understand exactly how you start to begin your breast pumping journey after baby arrives. I will tell you, I had absolutely no idea when my son arrived, what to do with this breast pump. I knew I wanted to nurse and I knew I was going to have to pump because I’d be going back to work at around 12 weeks. So I knew I needed to establish a supply that I could freeze. And I got a little bit obsessed about it. But I did tons of research. And I was just like, oh my gosh, okay, and now the day was there. When I was looking to begin pumping and I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t understand the flanges I didn’t understand what the buttons did, I didn’t understand how to set everything up how long you should do it, all of that stuff. So we’re going to take the guesswork out of that for you today. And we’re going to talk all about it because fast forward, I am now a lactation counselor, and Aaron on my team is pending her CLC exam results as well. So it’s a really exciting time, because here at Tiny transitions, we’re very much a safe sleep evidence based sleep coaching agency. But at the same time, we also understand that there’s so many aspects to parenting. And we want to make sure that we’re giving you the most sound solid advice, because I will tell you, there are a lot of sleep consultants out there whose advice about breastfeeding comes from their own breastfeeding relationship. And while there are certainly always going to be similarities, there’s also going to be very many differences. And so what we didn’t want to do was provide education for something we’re not certified to talk about. And a lot of sleep consultants do that, unfortunately. And it can lead you astray because everyone’s pumping and breastfeeding journey can be drastically different. I mean, I was a lactation counselor. And my breastfeeding journey with two kids was entirely different. So we’re going to talk about that today. So I can make sure that all of you are set up, to have success on your pumping journey for whatever that looks like for you. And we’re going to help you get there without the confusion or overwhelm of that pump. So first and foremost, you have to research what type of pump that you want. And what’s going to be most convenient in your lifestyle. So what do I mean by that? Well, obviously, you can go to Google when you can say, Hey, what are the best breast pumps on the market today? I’ll tell you what, the time when I had my son the technology was a bit different. Right? That was almost 10 years ago now. And so I went with Nadella because that was the pump that everybody had it worked really well and had really good reviews. And now they’ve got so many different types that are portable, depending on the type of you know, pumping you’re going to be doing. I had a hospital grade pump that I rented from the hospital, because that is a bit of a better type of suction, right? It’s hospital grade for a reason. So, you know, there’s a lot of different things we’re going to cover. But when you’re starting to invest in the right pump, you have to look at the different types, right? There’s electric pumps, okay, that’s what many breastfeeding parents have. And then they also have a manual pump, which could be someone who might be exclusively choosing to breastfeed and not plan a entire pumping schedule and relationship right. But there are going to be situations where maybe they need to get that milk out and the baby’s not hungry. So you can look at manual pumps, and even the wearable pumps on the market today. I used a product at the time that was called free knees and freebies attached to my traditional Adella pump, it allowed me to pump in the car so I could pump on the go. And on my way to work and on the way home, I would always pump because it was 20 minutes of uninterrupted kind of unstressed double time, that got a little bit of that milk out, since breastfeeding is supply and demand. And that, you know, you never have to worry about running out of milk. So when I got home from work, yes, I could nurse the baby. Because your body is always making it. It’s not as though it like runs out. It just has another signal where you’ll have another letdown, right, which we’re going to talk about. But when you’re trying to figure out the type of breast pump, right, again, you’ve got to look at your lifestyle, you’ve got to read the reviews, you’ve got to talk to some friends and peers, because there’s definitely pros and cons to the portability of something. And then, you know, if you need one pump, it’s covered by insurance, if you need two pumps for, you know, leaving one at the office, for example, if you’re going to be interested in renting a hospital grade pump, which at the time is you know, somewhere under 50 bucks a month. But for me it was helpful because I knew I wanted to establish the supply. And like I said, I got a little bit crazy about it when I first had my son. So I had that hospital grade pump, plus I had the one that I got through insurance. But there are so many options. Now, I will say that as baby grows, okay, and you’re looking to build a pumping relationship. For example, if you’re going back to work, I loved the portability. Because as a new mom, there is high postpartum anxiety, high postpartum depression, high rates of just total lack of understanding of what you’re doing, because we’ve all been there, right. And one of the things that was my saving grace, when I was home on maternity leave with my son, and with my daughter was that I would walk and I would walk twice a day for like an hour, so they could sleep for two hours so they could sleep. And I tried to get them on a loose little schedule, but also know that I had to pump and it was a great relaxing time for me to do so because when I wasn’t so focused on how much milk was shooting out, I ended up producing more from the pump. Because I feel like your body kind of knows that you’re sort of heightened stress when you’re sitting there staring at the milk coming out. And you can almost will yourself to not produce as much when you’re sitting there staring at every drop that comes out. And then your anxiety gets higher and your stress levels get higher. So I loved the fact that I had portability, where I could like strap the pump on, put the pump attachments on and then go for a walk for two hours. And I you know, obviously it wasn’t pumping the whole two hours, but I could pump the milk is good at room temperature for several hours, which we’ll talk about. So it was fine to do that and have it in there. You could pour it right into a bottle, put it into your little bag, finish your walk and then you can get home and put it in the fridge or freeze it depending on if you were planning to use the milk straight away. Or if you were going to put it in the bags and freeze it and build a bit of a freezer stash. So that’s part of what you want to assess. In the good quality breast pumps. Now, you can talk to a lactation counselor at the hospital, you can also meet with a lactation counselor either, you know in your home or in their office. Now some new parents aren’t ready to kind of venture out yet with a baby. Oftentimes that your well visit there will be an ibclc which is one of the types of certifications for breastfeeding. There will be like a nurse practitioner at the office that is also an ibclc. So definitely ask your pediatrician if you do have questions about beginning this pumping relationship and you’re not quite ready to go see a lactation counselor, but you’re just unsure of the route you want to go. Okay, it needs to fit in with your lifestyle it needs to fit in with your budget. And I will tell you medulla and Spectre are probably two of the most popular brands out there. Just to give you a head start in Google. Okay, so once you’ve got this good quality breast pump, it’s gonna come and you’re gonna go what do I do with this? There’s all these buttons, all these flanges, how does it work? What does it look like? Don’t worry, we’re gonna get there. And we’re going to talk a little bit about your breast pumping techniques. So it’s always very important, you’re comfortable and relaxed and that you have a nice position. When you’re pumping, I would pump in the car, I would pump in the nursery, I would pump sitting on the couch watching long episodes of lawn order. You name it I pumped in, it was a great way, you know, to kind of get that milk out on the fly. But I also had to have a schedule. So in addition to the breast pumping technique, right, you’ve got to figure out the timing in which you’re going to do it. Now, if I was getting ready to pump I would always make sure I gave my breasts a bit of a massage before. Okay, so it kind of just got things going.

I mean, I wasn’t like squeezing it so the milk would shoot out. I’ve only done that a few times when my husband pissed me off and I shot it in his face, but I would massage my breasts gently to kind of just get ready for that breast milk to flow. Then I would take the Attach Schmitz, right? So you’re gonna have these flanges, and you’re gonna have to figure out which one works with your nipple size. You don’t want your nipple, when it starts that letdown process, which is the part where your nipple is getting sucked into the machine, you don’t actually want your nipple touching the outside of those flanges. So a lot of new parents that I do kind of lactation education with during our sleep training, we talk about that, because they’re like, I can see my nipple like kind of filling out the sides of the flange and you don’t want that. That means that the flange isn’t quite big enough. They do you make little tiny rulers that you can measure your nipple size with when your nipple is hard. And that can be a really good way to help you figure out just what size you need from a flange, because oftentimes, the ones that they send may or may not be right for your nipple size, and everybody’s nipple size is different. And if it’s not the right one, it can impact the amount of milk it can impact the comfort. And it can make sure that you are you know, producing the biggest output for the breast pumping journey. Okay, so your technique, as well as your suction level and the speed that’s going to control how much milk comes out. And you also want to make sure that you have a good seal that you’re nice and relaxed. So you are prepared, right for this every time you plan to pump depending on what your pumping schedule is going to look like. So that’s the third thing we’re going to talk about today. What is the perfect time to pump Okay, I’ll tell you newborns all the way through 12 months of age need to eat roughly every three hours as their newborns it could be between two and three hours. But regardless, you have to figure out where you’re going to fit time in to actually pump depending on what your goal is. Okay. So a lot of times, I will encourage new moms to pump after the first feed in the morning, your breasts are generally the most full, baby gets a nice full feed off post breasts. And then you can attach the pump and get whatever remaining milk is in there out for about 15 or 20 minutes, that’s where I would start. Okay, that is going to be all the day and how it looks right. So you’re gonna have baby waking baby feeding, baby sleeping, baby waking baby feeding baby sleeping, right. So typically, again, every two to three hours babies are going to eat they need 24 to 32 ounces of milk in a 24 hour period. It does not matter if it’s breast milk, it does not matter if it’s formula 24 to 32 hours, or 3024 to 32 ounces of milk in a 24 hour period. Okay? When babies get that in the day is generally when they start to sleep longer at night, but it’s completely expected that a baby as a newborn, those first months of life actually wakes to eat overnight. Okay, now there’s going to be also periods where baby sleeps longer and your breasts feel and gorged they hurt, they’re rock hard. And you have to get that milk out. So in the middle of the night, if baby’s sleeping, you might need to get up and pump. Or you might need to hand pump just to get some of it out from a comfort standpoint.

You might also find that after you nurse your boobs still feel a bit hard and heavy babies back asleep, it’s the middle of the night, I’d encourage you to do a quick pump for about 10 or 15 minutes to get any remaining milk out. One, it’s a nice way to store up some extra milk to make sure you’re comfortable for the rest of the night depending on what your pumping and feeding schedule is going to be. Now, when you’re looking to establish the schedule during the day, it’s going to be based on your goals are you just trying to get extra milk out because perhaps you’ve got a bit of an oversupply, you want to balance that so you’re not producing so much that you’re constantly in a state of oversupply. But you also want to make sure you have enough based on your goal for me, I was going back to work my children would be in daycare every three hours they were eating from the bottle. So I really wanted to make sure I had a nice freezer stash after 12 weeks now I will tell you, I became a little bit crazy obsessed with pumping and with nursing and with these unrealistic expectations as a new parent around trying to be the perfect parent. And it led me in a downward spiral relatively rapidly. And I’m only telling you that because there is an immense amount of pressure on moms to breastfeed. I’ll tell you what my second daughter as a lactation counselor was mostly formula fed, because there was something in my breast milk, something in my diet that we could just never pinpoint. She did great on formula, but there was something in my milk that every time I ate, she would scream uncontrollably. And it was not a milk protein allergy. It was not anything I could isolate other than potentially the fact that I ate so much in the form of like leafy greens and things that could have caused us comfort. It was the point where I basically had 1000 ounces of milk frozen because I still continued to pump every three hours for six months. And ended up donating it all to the breast milk bank because she could just never take it with comfort, everybody’s journey is different. Okay, I pumped for every three hours with both kids for very many months. And so that was my normal, okay, you might just pump once a day, you might want to pump so you have a little bit as a top off feed. If your partner grandma coming over and they want to give a bottle, you have to look at balancing what’s going to work for you. And then with that, based on your milk outcome, determine the ideal schedule. Okay, I was someone who wanted to have some in the freezer, so I could run out and go to Marshalls for two hours, I could go get my nails done, I could take a break. And it was okay. And so for me, I pumped after every time I fed throughout the day. So I would baby feed and then put the pump on and maybe for 10 or 15 minutes while baby was chillin, I would get some milk out and I would put it in the freezer. Okay, then after the kids went to bed, I would do a power pump. Okay, so a power pump is a way that you can boost your supply a bit, and then also have some extra to put in the freezer. So power pumping, what I did was I would get my kids down for the night, typically around seven o’clock. And then I would put the pump on. And I would do 10 minutes on 10 minutes off, but I would keep the pump attached. Right. So I would watch a show I’d kind of get into something, you know, on Netflix and I would do 10 minutes on 10 minutes off, 10 minutes on 10 minutes off, 10 minutes on and I was done. So it’s called Power pumping, it’s a way to stimulate milk production in the breasts and do it in a way that could take a couple of days to kind of get going. But then your body believes you need that milk because you know nursing is supply and demand right as far as like your supply goes. And so that was good for me to build up a bit of a freezer stash, frankly, I was more relaxed, the kids were asleep, I would get the kids down, I would do the pumping session, I would take a shower and I would go right to bed. And then the milk I would pump from that power pumping session, my husband would actually go in at 10 o’clock pm and wake one of the kids up who’s ever you know, at the time it was Max at the other time, it might have been Sybella. And he would go in and actually wake them, bring them out into the living room offer them a full feed from the bottle while I was sleeping. And then I got a good solid chunk of sleep because baby would go back down and then sleep till like one or two in the morning. So in theory, I was sleeping from like eight to 2am every night with a newborn. So I didn’t feel like a total hot mess. Okay, you have to figure out what works for your family that worked for us. And then the rest of the night I would wake up a nurse. And then if I had to pump I would pop the pump on for a few minutes if I still felt a bit ding gorged after baby ate, right. So that would be the kind of ideal situation is figuring out kind of when you plan to pump and you know what, some days you might make the pump some days you might not and that’s okay. You know, you just have to understand what your goals are. Knowing that milk is best right Fed is best and don’t over stress about having that epic amount like I did, because it like I said could take you down this just crazy road and there are professionals who can help you. They can help you set up a schedule, they can help you getting that pump going. I have a girlfriend who was actually a former sleep coaching client here she does a company called empowered pumping. Her name is Sandy green and she does virtual consults for new moms on like how to get a pumping routine established. And she’s lovely. Aaron on the team here, as I mentioned is the CLC and does work with families especially in the expecting and postpartum space around establishing a pumping routine, establishing a schedule, getting on a sleep routine, and really working individually with your goals. And then building a program that’s best for you so that we can balance the proper nursing relationship, the proper breastfeeding relationship, the proper pumping relationship and the right sleep relationship to make sure baby is growing and thriving as they need to. So after you’ve got this milk out, right, you’ve got all these pump parts, I will tell you, your spouse or partner is going to be looking for something to help with if you are nursing, let them clean and store all of these pump parts and sanitize them and wash them and it is amazing how much that stuff adds up. So you want to make sure that you’re storing and cleaning all of your pump parts because they could be a bacteria jungle out there. So you want to make sure that breast milk stays either in the fridge or gets frozen. And you can keep it in the fridge for up to about a week. And then you can freeze it for they say up to six months in a deep freezer up to 12 months. If you’re cycling through. That’s not a big deal because you kind of just pull from the older stash and then put the newer pumped milk into the freezer and you create this nice little cycle. The biggest thing is making sure everything is sterilized right they make microwavable bags. Like when I was in the office, I would use those microwavable bags to sterilize. You can also do it once a day at night. That can be part of you know your partner’s routine if possible. Something that a friend could offer to do is come over Just wash these epic amounts of parts, I will tell you, if you have not yet registered, I would register for additional pump parts based on the pump you buy, because sometimes you’re not going to feel like cleaning them. And then you also want to make sure you have, you know, extra pieces because there are pieces that need to be changed in order to maintain the effectiveness of the pump. And so you want to make sure that you’ve got all of those different things that are available for you on the drop of a dime. Right. I will tell you as a little trick when we were breastfeeding and bottle feeding, right we did both with our kids both from the day they came home from the hospital. I always made sure I preemie nipples, for two reasons. One, the number one nipple we use Dr. Brown’s bottles was a little bit too fast of a flow for my kids. So I didn’t want them slamming the milk and then getting sick or spitting up or having a trapped burp or something. Right. So we actually used preemie nipples first. Even though the kids were not premature. It helped slow the milk down and allowed for a better more balanced pace feed for those first few weeks of life. So just a little hack, you might be worth grabbing, you know a preemie bottle or if you’re using Dr. Brown like we did grabbing a couple of those preemie nipples that you use, if you’re trying to establish the proper nursing relationship along with the PAP proper bottle relationship for kids, we did that from day one. And our kids never had any issues. They would ping pong between the breast and bottle, there was never a preference. And I know many of my sleep clients are so appreciative of that 10pm dream feed hack that I talked about, because it allowed them to get some rest and allowed their partner to also have some time to bond and to enjoy feeding their little one. Just remember, try to be patient. Okay? Breast feeding is hard. Pumping is hard, your milk is going to fluctuate, your supply is going to fluctuate stress can affect your supply. And as I mentioned, I was a ball of stress, right? Constantly, like how much was my output? What

am I doing? Why can I do this? You know, I had so many feelings both positive and negative. Stay hydrated, drink water, drink coconut water, you know, just try to get enough hydration for your body. Because you’re going to be focusing on a baby, make sure you’re nourished, make sure you’re eating have snacks, bags of nuts, granola, you can make lactation cookies, we work with besties best a lot. They’re actually local here to where I am in Philadelphia. And they are an amazing company that sells lactation treats. So you know all kinds of different avenues as far as like helping with that milk supply, but also making sure that you’re staying nourished because it’s important for you that you have energy to manage being home with your baby, get as much rest as you can. It is so hard to sleep when the baby sleeps, because you might not be tired at two in the afternoon, or you might not be able to just plop yourself down and pass out. So you try to work on a schedule that’s going to balance getting you rest, making sure you’re nourished and making sure that everybody’s getting what you need to feel able to dedicate to the pumping and to making sure you’re caring for your little one. Breast pumping is optional. You don’t have to do it. There’s plenty of people who exclusively breastfeed, I’ll tell you for us, it was something that I had to do by 12 weeks because I was going back to work and because I wanted my partner to take time to be able to bond with baby and to be able to offer a bottle so I can go out for a few hours. It takes time to be a pumping pro, you are going to have good days and bad days and stressful days and relaxing days, there are days you’re gonna High Five yourself and feel like a boss. And other days you are not all of it is totally normal. Take care of yourself emotionally and physically. We are here at Tiny transitions to help you with your sleep training journey to help you asleep shaping your newborn so you never have to sleep train. We’re here to help you and talk you through nursing and pumping and building that schedule. Every family we work with is unique and different. And that’s part of what helps us to be the most well rounded sleep coaching agency in the country. And there’s a reason that we work with so many families because we get it. We’ve been there we’ve experienced and we want to make sure that you’re doing the best for yourself and for your family so everyone can be their best here and world breastfeeding week. Give yourself a high five because breastfeeding is an amazing journey that I know can be incredibly challenging at times but also can be wonderfully rewarding. Thanks so much for tuning in. So happy to have you here on the kids sleep show. I’m Courtney Zentz. And I look forward to meeting you and to helping you on building healthy sleep habits for life in your home too.

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