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Jun 28, 2023

Tommee Tippee Breast Pump review: a new mum's honest thoughts

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A new mum shares her honest experience of the hands-free, hospital grade electric breast pump

Throughout my pregnancy I was constantly told that nothing can ever truly prepare you for labour and having your first child. And... wow, was that accurate. Settling down for the night, I'd just flopped onto the sofa with a hot chocolate when my contractions started to kick in seemingly out of nowhere – ten days before my daughter's due date. Two hours later, we were in the car on the way to hospital with my TENS Machine working overtime.

Fast forward another 12 hours, featuring indescribable levels of pain and buckets of happy tears, my baby girl was here. Within moments of her being born, the midwife placed her on my chest and manoeuvred her mouth around my nipple, and that was where she rested for the next 20 minutes. I distinctly remember thinking "okay, this whole breastfeeding stuff isn't so bad". Ha!

Those early days and weeks were a combination of equal parts tough and magical. I was desperately tired and sore, and constantly struggled over whether or not to tidy up and put a wash on whenever my newborn napped, or try and get some sleep myself. But there was also something else I struggled with: breastfeeding. I always knew I wanted to breastfeed, but I wasn't prepared for how difficult (and gruelling) it can be. Writing this almost four months after welcoming my daughter, I still wince when I think about the bleeding, cracked nipples, the leaks (a colossal understatement considering I’d sometimes ‘leak’ 40ml of milk from the boob I wasn't feeding from) and night sweats.

I spent hours a day, sometimes sobbing, scrolling through Google looking up how to get the right latch and how to relieve the pain, but in reality there was no way I could force my 6lb 15oz baby's tiny mouth to make the perfect shape to remove milk without doing any damage in those early days. We were both learning and it was going to take time. At one point, I had such a bad crack on my left nipple that I had to hand express for almost four days while she exclusively fed off my right breast. No amount of nipple cream was going to help. But as the weeks went by and she grew, her latch got better and it became easier to position her on my breast. And somewhere between weeks five and six, it stopped hurting completely.

When my nipples weren't so sore in those early weeks, to increase my supply I started pumping a few times a day between feeds and once a night when the milk producing hormone prolactin is at its highest (the more you feed at that time the more milk you produce). Once my supply was established, I then pumped so that my partner could feed our baby and I could get a welcome break from waking up every two hours for feeds. By ten weeks, our daughter had started sleeping for longer stretches through the night, so the pump also came in handy to relieve any engorgement and to pump the breast she didn't feed from when she did wake.

Yes, pumping, washing and sterilising parts can be a lot of effort – and they aren't always cheap either – which is why getting the right pump for you is so important. Enter the Tommee Tippee Made for Me™ Wearable Double Breast Pump (which starts at £199.99 for one pump, or £349 for two): first off, the hospital grade electric pump is surprisingly straightforward to assemble. The double pack comes with four flanges (the plastic piece that's placed over your nipple to form a seal around the areola) in two different sizes, two pumps, three 150ml pump collectors and two Tommee Tippee teats – which you can attach directly to the collector.

Before you start pumping, you need to download the Tommee Tippee app to your phone and sync up the pumps via bluetooth. Every time I pump I use the app as it lets you easily increase or decrease the expression levels, and once you’ve finished pumping you can input how much milk you’ve pumped (the app also estimates how much you've expressed but I’ve found it's not always accurate). This helps keep track of how long I’ve been pumping and keeps a record of when my milk supply is at its highest, so I know what time to pump for the greatest amount, which was particularly useful in the first few weeks.

One of the main pros of this hands-free pump for me is that there are zero wires, so the pumps fit really snug underneath a bra and I can comfortably carry on with getting things done, although you do need to make sure the bra is tight enough to hold the pumps firmly in place to keep the suction so they’re efficiently removing milk. The wireless design also means they’ve been really easy to wear at 4am on the side I’m not nursing my sleepy baby, or to pop on to quickly relieve engorgement as her nighttime sleep stretches got longer. If you use Tommee Tippee bottles you also have the option to screw the teats directly onto the milk collector.

As for negatives, I have found it's tricky getting the last remaining 5ml or so of milk out of the collectors due to the design which is frustrating. I have to really, really shake the collector into the milk storage bags. Due to it being wireless, the pump is bulkier than other electric pumps on the market too and it makes a noticeable suction noise, but I will happily take the size over wires – and both my baby and partner sleep soundly whenever I pump beside them overnight.

Daisy taking her breast pump on date = relatable

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