Recommendations for breast pump?

[aug2ftm]

I’m hoping to breastfeed directly as well as express so my husband can feed the baby from a bottle too, so I’m wondering if anyone can help with recommendations for a breast pump?

Also should I buy one before birth or wait until breastfeeding is established?

I tried a few different pumps with my first and none were good. The second time I rented a hospital grade pump. It was great. Not as effective as the baby but it was the next best thing.

In my first pregnancy i bought the manual Medela pump, I didn't want to shell out hundreds on an electric one if the manual one would suffice. I also thought if I had issues breastfeeding then I wouldn't mind that I had wasted £20 or so.

The manual one worked perfectly for me, I could get a bottle pumped out in 15 minutes and that was good enough for me. Maybe the electric ones are quicker than this, I'm not sure.

I only started pumping once milk was established, so I think when DS was about 2/3 months.

Haaka pump!! Catches the let down from the boob you aren't feeding from.

They don't recommend pumping before your supply is pretty established (6-8 weeks). But I found with dd That she wouldn't take a bottle from then. I think it was too late (but she's also a weirdo cause she's two and still won't take milk even though we stopped bfing when she was 15 months). So I'm planning on trying from about 2-3 weeks with a bottle of breast milk for this little one (currently 38 weeks).

I love my tommee tippee pump. Got it right after having baby, bf for first three weeks and pumped, it always got plenty of milk. I tried the medela hospital grade pump after 3 weeks and ended up with blocked ducts as it didn't get the milk out properly. Not sure why I tried, think I thought the tommee tippee wasn't getting enough! I was wrong!
I'm now exclusively pumping w tommee tippee and a medela swing flex which I bought when trying out pumps at the beginning, still prefer tommee tippee tho the battery life is crap.

You might have to try a few pumps before getting one that really works for you.