Pumping milk with a breast pump is something that most mothers face at some point during breastfeeding. Whether you are going out for a few hours or going back to work and want to leave milk for your baby, here are some tricks to pump more milk with a breast pump.

It’s always got to know some of the following tricks and even more so if these are getting you to express more milk. Here are some hints for getting more milk with a breast pump:

1. Brands: something to keep in mind

As with other products like cars or household appliances, there are many brands of breast pumps on the market, and they have different performance characteristics. There are indeed mothers who pump milk very easily and can get out a good amount even with the worst breast pump on the market. But some brands take more care of their breast pump offerings and imitate the sucking motion of the baby better through the reproduction of the sucking cycles and the power of pumping. On the other hand, the less effective breast pumps only perform a vacuum continuously (by repeatedly pulling on the nipple), which can cause pain. So, whenever possible, assessing and comparing some brands is not too bad.

2. Size does matters

Related to the previous point, the most effective breast pumps have different funnel sizes. Women do not have a standard nipple size; there are women with small, large, and very large nipples. And for each type, it is necessary to have the right funnel size. An inadequate funnel can hinder the extraction and damage the nipple. To know which size is the right one, you need to measure the diameter of the front of the nipple at rest and add 2mm.

3. The ideal environment

Having the same location for pumping is not always possible, although it may help to get a little more milk. Creating a routine is going to make it easier for our bodies to get used to pumping.

4. Two things at once

When babies are small, you can make the most of your time and facilitate the extraction if you are breastfeeding your baby while using the breast pump on the other side.

The ejection reflex that is obtained when the baby suckles from one breast facilitates the extraction with the opposite breast pump. This technique stops working when babies get older because they are distracted by the breast pump and the noise it makes, and it will be impossible to do both at the same time.

If your baby is less than three months old, you can use the time you are breastfeeding to express milk from the opposite breast. In this way, the let-down reflex of the milk produced by the baby at suckling, which affects both breasts, allows you to express milk more easily.

5. One hour later

About an hour after the baby has breastfed, it may be easier for the mother to get milk. The breast is a factory and works tirelessly so that whenever the baby asks for milk, there is milk. The baby can express milk much more effectively than a breast pump, even though it is the best on the market, so what is complicated for the breast pump is to get an ejection reflex (let down) of the milk. If we let a while pass to do the pumping, we can get a little more milk.

6. The preparation

It is best to perform a good massage on the breasts before starting the extraction. A good previous massage of the breasts stimulates the ejection reflex (let-down) of the milk before beginning with the pumping, and this favors that it is easier to collect milk.

7. Repeat, repeat, repeat

To get more milk, it is better to pump several times a day than once a day for longer. In this way, if throughout the day we take advantage of pumping for 5-7 minutes every hour or every two hours, we will get more milk than pumping one hour in a row throughout the day.

8. Smell, see, touch

The ejection reflex (let-down) of milk is not only produced by the suckling of the baby. Oxytocin is activated by stimuli: olfactory, visual, and tactile… touching, smelling, and seeing the baby’s things should make it easier to express milk.

9. For mothers who have premature babies in the hospital, it will be much easier to get milk if they have their babies next to them.

10. Everything at the same time

It has been shown that a very useful way to get more milk is to do all of these:

• Start with a good breast massage
• Continue breast pump extraction
• Performing breast compression while using the breast pump
• Finish with manual extraction
• Not controlling… with a good soundtrack
• Looking at the amount of milk that comes out during pumping does not help you to relax. So it’s best, if possible, to be distracted during the pumping: watching TV, listening to music, or reading. For some women, the noise of the breast pump makes them nervous. If it’s annoying, it’s best to avoid it. So put on headphones and listen to music that we like very much, it will make everything more relaxed and simple.

If you have more tricks, we’ll be happy to hear them and share them.

You can find more information about all things breastfeeding in our free app, LactApp, for iPhone or Android.