Expressing Breastmilk Using a Breast Pump

Expressing milk means squeezing milk out of your breast, using either your hand or a manual/ electric pump. As with hand-expressing, take some time to learn how to use them. Start practising well before the time you need to go back to work so you’ll be really good at it and quite relaxed about it when you do.

The same ideas re getting the hormones and the milk flowing that we talked about for hand-expressing also work for pump expressing. So if you haven’t got your baby with you, try thinking about her, looking at a photo of her, or massaging your breast with something like a warm flannel first. This will help the hormones to flow, and then just use the pump following the instructions.