The baby is asleep, you’ve got the breast pump ‘doof dooffing’ and you’re determined to express enough milk for at least three feeds. You’ve been pumping for AGES (well, it seems like AGES). Surely you’ve got at least 400ml by now.
You look down and what do you see? 10ml.
What the fudge is this? How could it possibly be filling so slowly?
This, my baffled breastfeeding friends, is the law of pumping. The more you watch it, the less it fills. The more you relax, the more the milk will flow, which is easier said than done, especially when you’re racing against the clock and a baby whose destined to wake from her nap anytime.
Let it flow
Lactation consultant, Johanna Sargeant has come up with the simplest way to prevent this conundrum from ruining our pumping sessions.
It’s so clever and so easy that we’re not sure why we didn’t think of it sooner!
A watched bottle never fills
Enter: the baby sock. A simple, standard baby sock. You probably have 20 of them hidden away in the various baby drawers.
Simply place it over the bottle and you no longer can see how much you’re expressing. If you can’t watch how much (or how little) you’re expressing, you can’t worry about it. Genius, right?
“Now I advise mamas to put a sock over their pumping bottle, and it has been getting incredible results,” Johanna writes on the original Facebook post which has since been deleted.
Some women are reporting often 2-3 times more milk when they remove themselves mentally from the result of their pumping session!”
Breast pumping hack goes viral
Since sharing the clever idea, mums all over the world are taking the advice on board and seeing some impressive results. Many admit that, yep, the clever sock idea works wonders!
Some mums are using a blanket instead of a sock while one mum even mentions using a breast pump bra and pumping while driving. You’ll need a breast pump with a USB attachment to do so, like the Pigeon GoMini, but what a cool idea!
If you’re breastfeeding and expressing, give it a go. We’d love to know if this pumping hack works for you!
