The Breast Pump

I have to admit, I find this device intimidating. I imagine there are some men who would happily sign right up to use a machine that attaches itself to a sensitive part of their anatomy and then sucks bodily fluids from it. But after seeing it in action... I don't know.

It's innocuous enough. Ours looks like an empty airhorn with a grammophone top and was, I thought, horrendously expensive... until I started shopping around. I've discovered that breast pumps, like anything else related to parenting, is an industry unto itself. There are kits for these things, entire pumping systems, each more expensive than the last. I believe I'm in the wrong line of work.

As for the pump itself, there's a large trigger mechanism along the top that activates it. Plug it in, use the battery, or use the manual pump. Any one of the three will get things flowing. So to speak.

Once it's going, the nipple is gently pulled into the grammophone top (which Avent calls a "sealing disc" but I like "grammophone top" better), released, pulled in, released in a regular rhythm. You could set a metronome to it. In, out, in, out, in , out... Like I said, some men might find it... titillating.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Anyway, the pump runs quietly on electric mode, which is good. If it were too loud, we'd limited in its use to time when the baby was awake. And mobile babies are often hungry babies. Manually expressing milk, while silent, would probably fry our wrists in an awful hurry. Even though my sweetie will be at home for the time being, she'll likely be teaching the occasional night class at the local junior college. And since *I* can't express milk, the pump should prove quite useful in preparing for those evenings when she won't be around.

So we now know how to use the pump and have assured ourselves that it works as advertised. I've also read that stimulating the nipples can encourage labor by releasing oxytocin. Pitocin, which is a chemically identical manufactured version of oxytocin, is used to induce labor so perhaps this will bring some regularity to the on-again, off-again contractions my sweetie has been enduring for nearly a week. My only concern is the warning that excessive nipple stimulation might lead to too much oxytocin release, resulting in overly powerful contractions that can harm both mother and child.

With that in mind, we tested the pump for perhaps three minutes before stopping. Better to suffer a few more days' pregnancy than risk harming our child.

But haven't we suffered enough?