Why you shouldn't share breast pumps

Since it keeps coming up on my local mother's group message board (shout out to Mothers & More SOMA!) and I've seen it mentioned in our Medela Freestyle giveaway entries, I thought it would be a good time to address a key issue with breast pumps - why you should not share them with other women.

Since a breast pump can cost in the $200-400 range, it's very tempting to borrow a friend's breast pump instead of buying a new one. We cannot say this strongly enough- you should not use another woman's breast pump. It's so important that the FDA recommends against it as well.

I've heard two skeptical views from local mothers- that the FDA doesn't conduct independent research - that their recommendations come from the manufacturers who forward the results to the FDA, and that of course the recommendation coming from the manufacturer is self-serving- so they can sell as many pumps as possible. They do have some merit but if you take that stance, you'll never trust anyone or anything!

There are two key issues- contamination and motor strength.

Contamination
Many people think that if they buy new tubing and breast shields that they can safely use another's breast pump. This is true for hospital grade breast pumps, but not for home versions. It's not the tubing you need to worry about- it's the contamination of the motor- the part the tubing plugs into. In order to create suction to simulate the baby's sucking, the motor pulls air (like a vacuum) into itself. Your bacteria is going in and out of the pump every time you use it and you can't sterilize it.

Certain models, like the Amedas and Playtex Embrace, have a filter that prevents bacteria from being sucked into the pump motor mechanism, but with the filter-less Medela models, there is nothing to prevent this. Instead of doubting the veracity of this information about contamination, I would question why Medela refuses to, in the words of a lactation consultant I know, " add a ten cent filter" to prevent this.

(As an aside, I think it's important not to look at this only anecdotally because there are numerous risky behaviors or activities that don't happen to us or people we know personally, yet we still avoid doing them.)

Motor strength
But there's another issue involved- and I think it's probably the more important one- the power of the motor itself. Non-hospital grade breast pumps are meant as single-user, single-use products and are not guaranteed to work for one mom when it's been used by another. (In fact, sharing a pump with another mom voids the warranty.) Especially since double electric pumps are often used 2-3x a day for a year, the motor often burns out or at least is slowed substantially by this usage. That's totally okay though- that's why the pumps are under $400 versus several thousand for a hospital grade pump which is intended to be used by multiple users for an extended period of time (and it has that filter!).

If you've inherited a pump from someone or used yours with multiple kids, it WILL work but it's definitely going to be much slower. Since the power motor is what literally sucks the milk out of you, a pump with a stronger motor (or a newer or less used one) is going to be that much more effective at doing its job. If it's the only pump you've ever used, you have nothing to compare it to. If it's your old pump, at least you know about its history, though you may have forgotten what the suction felt like. A less strong motor is going to affect the amount of milk you can express (or length of time you need to pump per session) and in my mind, may limit the time that a woman breastfeeds her child. If she is not able to pump as much milk as her child needs, she may decide to supplement with formula or abandon breastfeeding altogether.

When you look at it from a cost-perspective, buying a brand new pump is still a bargain compared to the cost of formula.