A hard plastic pump is nothing like a soft infant body. Its mechanical noises are very different from a baby’s coos. Its vacuum pressure doesn’t compare to a baby’s suckling motions.

The breastfeeding mother’s body is biologically set to release its milk in response to a baby’s cues. Despite manufacturers’ best efforts, pumps are nothing like babies. Is it any wonder that breastfeeding mothers who pump their milk might report some difficulty in producing milk for such devices? And what can be done to overcome this challenge?

Tap Your Senses
Jenniffer Milone, president and founder of PumpingSecrets.com, thinks she just might have the answer. She calls it the “Sense Memory Method of Milk Expression.” This approach relies on the mother’s use of external cues to communicate to her body that it is time for milk let-down. Like others before her, Milone encourages mothers to develop a “breastfeeding routine,” and based on that, a “pumping routine,” for when they are apart from their babies. Part of this routine might be drinking water, massaging your breasts, looking at photos of your baby, visualizing flowing images, and listening to relaxing music.

Pumping Secrets
This last tip is the focus of Milone’s endeavor. Pumping Secrets is the name of her CD. Not just any CD, this 80-minute disc offers a combination of piano music and baby sounds. It includes three tracks. The first, 50-minute “Breastfeeding Track”  includes only piano music. Mothers are encouraged to listen to this track while breastfeeding, as they enjoy their babies’ “soft skin, wonderful smell, and satisfied rhythmic sucking noises.” The second, 10-minute track is intended for use during a mother’s double-pumping session. This and the third, 20-minute single-pumping track both provide the same piano music, but here it is accompanied by baby sounds recorded during “an actual breastfeeding session.”  

Does It Help?
I remember that it was hard for me to relax during pumping breaks at my downtown office. I went through the same steps every time: set up the equipment, drink another glass of water, look at photos of baby, and begin. Because of the peculiar physical features of the space (namely, walls that did not extend all the way to the ceiling), I never tried music. However, Milone’s disc makes me wish I’d had it—and a pair of earphones—then.

Of course, any relaxing music that a mother chooses and listens to while breastfeeding might stimulate her body’s milk let-down during pumping. But I like piano music. I can imagine, during the most stressful times at work, needing that extra nudge of actual baby sounds.  (Any breastfeeding mother who has ever felt a twinge in her breasts—or actually leaked milk—in response to the cries of another’s baby will understand how this might help.) Of the many possible baby shower gifts and the many products marketed for breastfeeding support, I think this is a keeper. It would be a good gift for any new or expectant mother.

Jenniffer Milone. Pumping Secrets: How to Combine Work and Breastfeeding.CD, 80 minutes. $24.95. Available at PumpingSecrets.com.