Words by Rachel Ang
When my child was born I experienced, and continue to experience, a kind of identity crisis in which I was forced to learn who I am as a mother. I didn’t realise that in addition to becoming a mother I would have to become much more comfortable with being a mammal.
That’s what we all are: warm-blooded furry vertebrates with mammary glands which produce milk to feed our young. Contemporary life conspires to keep this common knowledge hidden, forgotten along with the kind of collective hunter gatherer knowledge that would probably serve us well when it comes to parenting. It seems undignified to identify as a member of the animal kingdom, when we could identify as any number of new maternal roles — tradwives, crunchy granola mums, activist mums, boymums. It’s odd, isn’t it? The experience of gestating, birthing and loving a child is so animal, so wild and embodied. My own animality has never been so plain to me.
That’s what I was thinking as I sat on the rug playing with my kid, the Avari Neo Glow Hands-free Breast Pump™ sitting neatly in my nursing bra, as my mammaries were efficiently milked in silent comfort. A surreal experience, using these pumps is like treating your breasts to a scifi film screening in the middle of the day (or night). I may be a mere animal, but we are living in the future!
What can I tell you? This is a hands-free breast pump which fits in your nursing bra. You can use one at a time or both together. The motors easily charge via usb connection, and the kit comes in a stylish case, handy for the travelling milkmaids among us. It comes with everything you need, including a number of different flange insert sizes (other pumps I have used only include one size, meaning the user has to buy more at extra expense).
It’s so quiet! You can pump next to a sleeping baby if you so wish. This is perhaps bad news for the new parent who hasn’t heard themselves think since their child was born, as I was left alone with my own thoughts for five minutes, and had forgotten what it felt like (terrifying). The last pump I used was so loud it was like being milked by a disgruntled robotic baby. I would be on the phone to a friend while pumping and they’d complain they could hardly hear me speak.
Easy to move around, never spills while expressing. I wore this in my bra while hanging up laundry, playing with my child on the floor, putting away dishes etc. Nothing seemed to break the seal or disrupt the expression of milk. Having said that, you could also wear these while watching TV and eating ice cream. There is no need to do chores while pumping, my queens. I was merely testing the limits of the hands-free life.
I had heard, anecdotally, that hands-free pumping yields less milk, so I had some reservations. I can now say that isn’t correct, at least not with this product, which is very efficient. I pumped five times across a week, at different times of day, to try and get a realistic spread of experience, and I never pumped for more than five minutes. During this experiment the milk I expressed at each session ranged from 50 to 100ml from each breast, which is an impressive volume for me.
Previously I had used a handheld pump, and while that can be more fiddly, I appreciated how easy it was to see how much milk had been expressed as I went, so I could stop once a certain volume was collected. With an in-bra pump, you can’t see the milk in the reservoir. You can of course easily monitor how much time has elapsed via the little screen.
With some pump systems you express straight into the receptacle which you then unscrew, cap, and refrigerate, or add a teat and give directly to your child. With this system, you decant the milk into another container (not included). It takes a little getting used to, if you haven’t used a hands-free pump before – in one of my first attempts I fumbled the crucial step of Getting the Milk Out and ended up spilling precious breastmilk over my kitchen table. However I admit I am clumsy, and it does get much easier with practice.
Now I have been an Avari user for a week, I can easily put together, dissemble and clean the pump in dim light, in the middle of the night, when sleep deprived etc; much like an assassin being able to assemble and load her gun with her eyes blindfolded, except way less dangerous or cool. But as I introduced myself to you, Reader, I am but a lowly mammal trying to feed my young.
