I have great friends, and many of them are breastfeeding or have breastfed in the past. Only one of them has had an oversupply of milk, but the breastfeeding ones have all heard about my challenges. (Some of them were very afraid of breastfeeding because they’d heard my story BEFORE they had actually had kids. I feel somewhat guilty about that, but it did mean that they got help with breastfeeding way earlier than others might!)
When I had baby #4, I got a call from one of my breastfeeding friends, who told me she was sending me something from Amazon. I looked it up: a Milk Saver from Milkies. I was intrigued, because one of the most annoying things about my early lactation is double let-down. I let down on both sides whenever letdown happens, no matter which side the baby nurses on. This leads to my entire outfit being covered in milk, or lots of use of burp cloths (one or two per feeding, at least), and difficulty in nursing anywhere but the comfort of my own home, since I sometimes cover whatever I’m seated in or on – and possibly the baby and other people around me, depending on my burp cloth placement – in milk. Awkward! Later in nursing, around 4-6 months, I can trust the nursing pads to keep things in line. By 9-12 months, dual letdown only happens when I don’t have my daytime breast coverage setup in place. (For normal moms, this might be a nursing bra. For me, it’s usually something that doesn’t exert much pressure, because I’ll get plugged ducts just from wearing a nursing bra.)
Back to Milk Savers! A Milk Saver is a flattened cup with a hole in the side that catches milk from the breast that the baby isn’t nursing on. It’s designed to fit over a woman’s nipple without compressing or changing the shape of the nipple, and then just catch the flow of milk. It fits right into a bra or tank top, and can hold slightly more than 4 ounces of liquid. It’s made of silicon, so that when it’s full, a mom can gently squeeze it into a spout shape and dump the milk into a freezer bag or other container for storing milk.
This tool changed my early nursing days dramatically. Two cons: I would forget and lean over while wearing it, which meant that I spilled the captured milk all over myself. And I sometimes wouldn’t get it on correctly – just on one side – and it would leak a bit on me. The first con really just meant that I should remember not to lean over, and the second was easily fixed with a strategically placed burp cloth. I had the burp cloths anyway, and they weren’t getting nearly the amount of use they’d gotten before the Milk Saver showed up. The pros far outweighed the cons with this device. I can’t tell you how much laundry I didn’t do because of this thing! It was so awesome, I couldn’t even begin to do it justice. AND I had a supply of milk in the freezer for the first time ever.
(I know that sounds strange, coming from someone with abundant milk, but I only pumped when absolutely necessary, because I didn’t want to increase my milk supply in any way, shape, or form that wasn’t completely obligatory.)
I didn’t constantly smell like old milk from the milk that had leaked on me. I could pack it into my purse and use it when out on the go. Sometimes I’d pack bags for the milk, and sometimes the plants nearby would get a little extra protein boost that day. One feels so much more confident nursing out and about when one is fairly sure that milk isn’t going to make a huge, leaky mess all over. One morning, during my baby’s first daytime feeding, I caught 4 ounces of milk – the Milk Saver was full almost to overflowing. I couldn’t believe how much milk had been running into burp cloths before! I could contemplate milk donation! (I didn’t actually get around to doing it, because I had a newborn and no plans in place, but maybe next time around.)
Once the baby got older and I didn’t have dual letdown – or, at least, not as much – I packed away the Milk Saver; if I have another baby, it will be one of the first things I dig out of storage. I can’t say enough about how much the Milk Saver helped me in those early months of breastfeeding. I highly recommend this product to anyone who notices dual letdown. (I’m not getting any kickbacks for this post – I’m just letting you know about a very helpful, useful product that changed my breastfeeding for the better.)
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