avent breast pump not working- or is it me?

[booyhoo]

it worked the first two times then tried yesterday, thought i just didnt have enough milk for it to work so put it away, have just tried again, with full breasts and its still not working. i thought they were pretty foolproof. what am i doing wrong?

Make sure you have put the valve in the right way round. Really easy to put it in the wrong way.

does it go in with the raised bits down or up, ive tried both ways but neither seems to work.

IIRC, it goes with the flat bit on the bottom and the raised bits up the way.

Are you using the silicone cushion insert? I found it way easier to get a seal without it.

I couldn't get the Avent pump to work for me at all. And I pumped at lot with a Lactaline with no problems at all.

Have you tried hand expressing ? If you don't need to express a lot it is ideal

I agree about hand expressing. I found it much faster than using a pump.

yep i tried hand expressing last night but dont think i have the technique right, plus i was pissed off that the pump wouldnt work so i gave up in bad temper. i dont need to express its just handy if i need to leave ds2 with mum for a few hours.

smallchange, the only silicone-ish thing is the bit that the pump handle clicks on to.

I couldn't get on with this one at all - it never seemed that sucky. Many tears of frustration! I found the Tommee Tippee manual one to be better but still never got that much out.

I had this, and to start with I found it quite difficult to get it to work reliably - I thought I'd got it wrong somehow as I didn't seem to get a seal properly. However, later on I found that this usually sorted itslef out with lots of little pumps rather than trying too large a pump to start with. I hope this made sense - some time ago, and difficult to describe anyway!

thanks mistlethrush, i'll keep trying it then and hopefully it'll fix itself.

Oh - and the other thing - if you start thinking 'Arrggghhh ITS NOT WORKING IT MUST BE WRONG I REALLY NEED TO EXPRESS SOME MILK I MUST BE DOING IT WRONG' etc etc, its almost guaranteed to not work! Don't worry whether it works this time or not, take the pressure of yourself, and hopefully it will improve

Chuck your Avent pump away and get a Medela Harmony. I couldn't get anything out of mine and then a breastfeeding counciller told me as I had big boobs the nozzle was just squeezing my nipple together and preventing the milk from coming out. She gave me a Medela and the milk just flowed out. Avent pumps don't fit everybody!

I found with the Avent pump, leaning forwards and dangling your boob into the pump helps to get a good seal. Leaning forward to express helps too and use the opposite arm to pump than the boob you are expressing from.