Breast pump recommendations - elvie

[Mabelann]

I have the medela swing electric breast pump which I used with dc3 who was born in 2017. I’m due dc4 soon but he’ll have to go to nursery very young, before I’d really want to stop breast feeding, so I’m thinking investing in a really good pump will be worthwhile. The Elvie looks good, in terms of being hands free and discreet. Does anyone know how well it works in real life or how it compares to medela? It’s pretty expensive!!

I personally really don’t get on with the elvie. Find it mega temperamental and difficult to get a good suction. I haven’t used the medela swing to compare though. My favoured method is the haaka on the other side during morning feeds which if you start early you should be able to get a good stash. Otherwise I have a medela manual pump which I prefer to the elvie as I can see what I’m doing and control the suction. The elvie is either agony pulling my nipple too hard or no suction whatsoever.

I had a really good experience with it - I used a medela hospital grade rental for the first couple of weeks to get supply flowing and then switched to the Elvie and had no problems. Was incredibly convenient - I used to pump while I took my eldest to the playground and baby slept / was with her father.

I have one elvie and a medela that is hospital grade, really I bought it to use if I'm out and about for the day but haven't had the chance to use it in that way because of lockdown. I have tried it at home a couple of times and it works well for me, but not quite as good as the medela, probably because I do breast compressions with the other one. I found that I didn't want to move around too much with it on incase the milk spilt out of the bottles but it was comfortable and the suction was fine and easy to control with the app rather than using the buttons on the pump. As I exclusively pump and will continue to for as long as possible, I think it was worth spending money on. It will be used only when I'm out for the day and back at work, the rest of the time I prefer to use the medela.

Interesting, thanks for your responses. I will see how I go with the medela this time, since I already have it, and might look into getting the Elvie when I go back to work if I think I’ll need something like that.

Wanted to notify you that if you do buy this pump and want to store it away for long term use you need to make sure you charge/update the software frequently otherwise long term storage can cause the pump to be redundant. I hope you do not find yourself in my position having to buy a new pump because the old doesn't last more than a year in offline mode!! I was disappointed with how little support I received from Elvie too!