Often new mothers think of breast pumping as a painful experience. If you're not able to breast feed you baby for what ever reason, the next best thing would be to consider breast pumping. This article will share some tips on how to increase your breast milk supply and make breast pumping an easier experience.how to increase milk supply with a breast pump
The first thing you need to consider is how to make a good breast pump selection, which also addresses how to increase breastmilk production. You have to keep in mind what your needs are when searching for the idea breast pump. Will you pump occasionally, once a day, or pump several times a day. The needs of the mother who will be pumping several times during the day will drastically be different than the mother who will be pumping occasionally.
If you are a working mother and intend on returning to work, make and effort to start breast pumping about 3 weeks before returning. This will stimulate your breast to produce more milk, and you might even try breast feeding your baby on one breast while pumping the opposite breast. The breast that the baby is feeding from will be stimulated to produce more milk, and pumping that same breast will also increase the stimulation of the breast producing hormones your body produces as a result of such stimulation.
Be consistent with your breast pumping routine. If you find that you are limited on time, pump for only a short period of time i.e. 5 minutes. The key is to consistently stimulate the breast to produce more breast milk; otherwise you might get poor results if you don't regularly stimulate your breast by pumping or by breast feeding. Try pumping your breast about every 2 to 3 hours for best results.
Pumping for long periods of time does not result in more breast milk production and may lead to unnecessary soreness of the breast. Ideally, you want to pump for short periods of time 5-10 minutes. Increase the frequency that you pump. Milk producing hormones may be increased by simply increasing the number of times that you pump. Granted each time that you pump, the amount of breast milk maybe reduced, but what we are shooting for here is the stimulation factor which is a key component in producing and sustaining your breast milk supply.
While electric pumps have become very popular these days, and note even some hand held manual pumps could be very convenient too (depending upon your needs), some women choose to expel breast milk by hand. This hand method may be difficult to apply in a working environment, but it could be beneficial when your away from the pump or if you're looking for ways to cut you breast pump cost.
