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Chapters

0:00 Introduction
0:43 Relax before you pump
1:04 Pump often
1:20 Breast feed on demand
1:34 Avoid formula milk
1:50 Drink lots of fluids
2:08 Avoid smoking
2:29 Take care of yourself





A breast pump is a mechanical device that lactating women use to extract milk from their breasts. They may be manual devices powered by hand or foot movements or automatic devices powered by electricity. On June 20, 1854, the United States Patent Office issued Patent No. 11,135 to O.H. Needham for a breast pump.[1][2] Scientific American (1863) credits L.O. Colbin as the inventor and patent applicant of a breast pump.[3] In 1921–23, engineer and chess master Edward Lasker produced a mechanical breast pump that imitated an infant's sucking action and was regarded by physicians as a marked improvement on existing hand-operated breast pumps, which failed to remove all the milk from the breast.[4] The U.S. Patent Office issued U.S. Patent 1,644,257 for Lasker's breast pump.[5] In 1956 Einar Egnell published his groundbreaking work, "Viewpoints on what happens mechanically in the female breast during various methods of milk collection".[6] This article provided insight into the technical aspects of milk extraction from the breast. Many Egnell SMB breast pumps designed through this research are still in operation over 50 years after publication.

Archaeologists working at a glass factory site in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, excavated a 19th-century breast pipe that matches breast pumping instruments in period advertisements.[7]
Breast pumps are used for many reasons.[citation needed] Many parents use them to continue breastfeeding after they return to work. They express their milk at work, which is later bottle-fed to their child by a caregiver. This use of breast milk is widespread in the United States, where paid family leave is one of the shortest in the developed world. American historian Jill Lepore argues that the need for so-called "lactation rooms" and breast pumps is driven by the corporate desire for parents to return to work immediately rather than mothers' wishes or babies' needs.[8]

A breast pump may also be used to stimulate lactation for women with a low milk supply or those who have not just given birth.[citation needed]

A breast pump may be also used to address a range of challenges parents may encounter breast feeding, including difficulties latching, separation from an infant in intensive care, to feed an infant who cannot extract sufficient milk itself from the breast, to avoid passing medication through breast milk to the baby, or to relieve engorgement, a painful condition whereby the breasts are overfull. Pumping may also be desirable to continue lactation and its associated hormones to aid in recovery from pregnancy even if the pumped milk is not used.[9][10]

In a 2012 policy statement, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended feeding preterm infants human milk, finding "significant short- and long-term beneficial effects," including lower rates of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). [11] When infants are unable to suckle, mothers can pump if they wish their babies to be fed (via naso-gastric tube) with the mothers' own milk.[12]

Expressing milk for donation is another use for breast pumps. Donor milk may be available from milk banks for babies who are not able to receive their mothers' milk.[13]

"Pump and dump" refers to the practice of disposing of breast milk rather than pumping it to be used. This may be done because the mother produces too much milk, or because the mother will be away from the baby too long without a way to store the milk, or because of concern over alcohol or some other sustance that the baby should not have.[14] The breast pump is not as efficient at removing milk from the breast as most nursing babies or hand expression.[15]

Research done at Stanford University in 2009 showed the correlation of various factors with the volume of milk production in mothers of preterm babies (born before the 31st week of gestation).[16] The research found that hand expression in addition to a breast pump (a technique called "hands-on pumping", or HOP), along with other factors correlated to higher milk production. The study found that mothers who used massage techniques and hand expression more than 5 times a day in the first 3 days after birth increased their milk production 8 weeks later, milk production increased 48%. The authors produced a video showing the technique and states that this technique is good for both mothers of premature infants as well as mothers that return to work or pump for other purposes.[17]

A second article on the same study found that the combination of HOP techniques increased the fat content of the milk expressed.[18