One of my favourite reasons why Hand Expression Technique is preferred over any breast pumps is because it’s just so mobile.

You can do it almost anywhere and anytime because there isn’t much equipment to lug about.

Clean hands.  Check!

Wide-mouthed milk bottles.  Check!

That’s it.

That’s all the basic stuff you need. I’ve hand-express in many places and even in clean toilets too, although that’s not entirely preferable.

When I started to hand-express my 2nd daughter about 9 years ago, we have a praying room at the office.  So during peak hours at the praying room, I would be doing my 2nd session of expressing for the day.

It never failed to amuse my colleagues when they saw me expressing.  And most of their comments were how easy it was to hand-express.  They were also shocked to see that how much more milk I was able to express in that way.

Although most people are a little shy to be expressing in public, when you do hand express, it literally enriches those around you.  People suddenly are aware that you can do this and how much better this is.

Since I started this 9 years ago, I’ve had a number of friends who were already breastfeeding and expressing their breastmilk  using breast pumps, switched to hand-express and have never looked back.

I’ve taught a number of people and demonstrated how it was done and it was always very humbling to hear them say that they never thought it could work.

I’ve also had friends who have babies and regretting that they did not breastfeed their older children because they thought they could not.  And while they saw me expressing, the sound of milk spurting against the wall of the bottle, they became inspired and finally found out that they COULD breastfeed.

That only shows that it’s all in your mind.

So, just give this a try.  You’ll be suprised at how well you could do this.  If I could do it, there’re not a lot of people who could not.  Seriously.

Hand Expression Technique is just an alternative method to express your breastmilk for your baby for those hours you’re at work or away and most importantly for you to continue giving your baby your precious breastmilk, even when you’re at the Boardroom.

I firmly believe that using your own hands to express breastmilk has serious benefits over the typical and more normal breast pumps.  Benefits not a lot of mothers know or even realised.

Maybe because we see around us those fancy gadgety two-funnel breast pumps and everyone around us uses one and we quickly succumb to the herd mentality.

So, that’s why I’m doing this.  Creating awareness and making mommies around the world realise that there IS another option.

A cheaper option.

A faster option.

A far more hygienic option.

I’m not advocating that you throw away your breast pumps just yet, but do explore this option.

Although I’m a major proponent of hand expressing, I do occasionally rent our electric breast pumps if I were to be away for more than 2 nights and during these long lonely days, hand expressing would be less effective.

What I’ll try to impart to you are the benefits which are definitely the ones that I felt the most during my 9 joyful years of breastfeeding one baby after another.

Today I’ll elaborate on my first and foremost motivation to hand express my breastmilk.

ENCOURAGE BETTER MILK FLOW

Most conventional breastpumps, use the vacuum method to coax breastmilk from its milk ducts.  Which is okay, logically.  Except that babies do not rely on pure vacuum power while they nurse.

If you observe a suckling baby, first he would massage the areola and he uses his jaws to suck, never the tongue alone.  And it’s like coaxing breastmilk from the ducts down to the nipple.

That’s what you do when you hand express.  You massage your breasts first.  And you when you express, try to rub your thumb from the flshy part of the breast towards the nipple and before you know it, the sprays will get stronger and a minute later, you could just relax while the letdown reflex works its magic.  You control the flow.

I’m not making this up, seriously.

My son Ariz needed a total of 30 oz of breast milk for the 8 hours I was at work.  Breast pumps would never get me that much with me cringing in pain.  But hand expressing did it for me.

I hand express my supply at 11ish in the morning and get 10 oz from each breast and at 3pm, another round and 5 ox per breast.  Tara! 30 oz.  And I was able to keep this up for 17 months.  Alhamdulillah.

So, there.

Now, we’re on to the real deal now.  We’re talking equipment. 

This is one of the many benefits of using the Hand Expression Technique to express your breastmilk instead of relying on a breast pump.

YOU DON’T NEED MUCH EQUIPMENT !

Well, maybe you need to have :

1. Both hands.  Clean, please?
2. Wide-mouth milk bottles.  I love the ones from Avent.
3. Some towels to wipe sprays (especially when you’re chatting with friends while you’re at it)
4. Pictures of your baby, to stimulate milk production.
5. Medela breast shells or breast pads, if you are have great let-down reflexes for the otehr breast.
6. Fridges or coolboxes to store the expressed breast milk bottles.  This is a cheat, I guess, cos you do’t really lug these around, would’ya?

Let’s dwell a little bit more now.

Your hands are all you need.  That’s the pump, that’s the engine and that’s God-given gifts to you.   They’re pretty much portable, easy to clean and ard to lose (unless you’re at a war somewhere, Transformers maybe?)

Wide-mouthed milk bottles.  The first pictures of hand expression I saw was a woman leaning about 1 foot away from a bowl.  Now, that looks a little hard.  So, I improvised.

I learned that effective expressing works when you target the nipple straight into the bottle.  Take care not to touch the bottle though.  You don’t want to introduce germs into your stock of EBM.

Towels are essentials.  If you’re like me, who are able to sprays dead a fly, a foot away, you need extra towels.  It’s easy to get distracted.  And if you’re distracted the milk still gets sprayed, all over the place.  That’s why you need the towel.

Plus, once you’re done, the only clean-up you need is to wipe your hands and breasts clean and that’s it.

Pictures of your baby is the easy way to stimulate letdown reflexes and milk production.  Think about your baby.  Usually, that’s enough to get me squirting away.

Breast pads or the Medela breast shells are extremely useful items to me, throughout my breastfeeding months.  I believe you need to have this on standby, because using hand expression gets the most milk out, at the fastest rate, and your other breast would be leaking milk too.  So, you might as well collect those.  Afterall, it’s hard work producing the milk, I ain’t letting it go to waste.

And of course to store the bottles of the expressed breast milk (EBM).

So,  there, you’re all set to go.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Breastfeeding has Lasting Benefits for Mom (blisstree.com)
• MilkBank – All in One Bottle (tastelikecrazy.com)

Breastfeeding is one of the most magical experience I’ve had in my life and no one baby is the same as the next .  I have four and I think, I do have a tiny wee bit of authority to admit just that.

Anyhow.

Because I work full time and I am obligated to start work 2 months after the childbirth.   It’s a constantly stressful time.  But that needs a new post altogether.

You see, mu husband had athma when he was younger and being genetically hereditary, I became overly obsessed over breastfeeding.  I figure that, if I can’t avoid it, at least, I hope that I could at least lessen its onslaught.

So I was determined to exclusively breastfeed my baby.

Like most working young mother, I could not afford those fancy Medela or Avent breastpumps and I could just afford the manual breast pump, the one where it comes in many parts and funnels and you’re supposed to pump up and down, creating vacuum so breastmilk would collect in the bottle.

My first pump was attached to a bulb.  I later learned that that was meant to relieve engorgement and not meant to store expressed breastmilk.

Anyhow.

By week 1, I was not a hammpy camper, having to lug in the pump and pump away to not much milk collected and I especially hated having to carry the whole gangbang to wash those tricky funnels and tubes and whatnots.

There’s got to be something better, something easier and in my Dorling Kindersley Mother and Baby Book, I found it.  There was a picture of a woman, leaning over a wide-mouth bowl espressing milk.

And I was sold.

To me, the Hand Expression Technique to express my bountiful breast milk was the most natural thing to do, next to breastfeeding itself.

So, read up my next posts on how you can make it happen too.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Breastfeeding has Lasting Benefits for Mom (blisstree.com)
• Medela Breast Pump – a working mom’s bestfriend (raunchyjohnson.com)
• Saving Money through Attachment (attachmentparenting.org)