Breastfeeding at Work - Gadgets

Breastfeeding while working sure need some help in order to maintain supply.

I am using the following pump. It is a single electronic pump but in actual fact, it is a 3-in-1. Manual, electric and battery. I usually bring all out when I am outside so that I can pump manually if there is no electric point or use the battery if I am too lazy to pump manually.

Only the electronic parts i.e. the elctronic head and battery casings are kept in the bag shown above. I got the bag free by buying S-26 Mama milk powder and it is really useful and suitable to be used this way.

The rest of the parts including the baby bottles and manual pump will go into the bag below.

And for storage of the milk, I am using pre-sterilized bags as shown below. The benefit of using bags to store the milk instead of bottles is that it is more convenient. The bags are already pre-sterilised and so, you can just pour the milk directly into it and then prepare to be kept in the fridge or freezer. I used to label the bags with date, volume and time. Later, I became lazier and labeled only with the date and volume.

Labelling with dates is very important as that will give you an indication of the expiry date. Chilled milk can be kept in the fridge for up to 2 days and frozen milk can be kept up to 3 months.

When I am home, I will seal the bags using a heat sealer which is actually a really good investment. By heat sealing, you can leave the bags flat to freeze in the freezer compartment. Once frozen, you can keep them like the way you arrange books.

I kept the milk in this manner in separate plastic bags according to the month the milk was expressed. This is important so that we can keep track of the expiry date by batches since we do not want to throw any expried milk out, it will be such a waste.

When I am outstation, I will use cable tie to seal the bags. This is a cheaper option but may take up a lot of freezer space.

Ice packs are must-have necessity especially since I am doing Marketing and I can spend whole 8 hours out of house or office. This is to keep the milk chilled until I am able to store them in the fridge or freezer.

For hygiene purpose, I have a separate scissors for cutting and slitting when the need arises i.e. to separate the pieces of bags and to cut open any milk storage bags.



Oh, last piece of advise - Always store the milk in 2-3oz and nothing more! I had so many stored in 5-oz quantity cause I wanted to save on the milk storage bags.

My son rarely take 5-oz at one-go and I had no choice but to throw the balance as thawed milk must be consumed within an hour and cannot be frozen again for storage.