Pregnancy Update Week 29: Breast Pumps & Fabric Swatches.

I'm now 29 weeks!

Last week I had a growth scan to check everything was going as it should be, and according to that Bel is currently 1200g which is a nice size for her gestation, the consultant isn't at all worried about her at this stage. She's currently breach but has plenty of time and fluid to turn round in. My next scan will be at 32 weeks, which is when we started to notice problems with Boo so I can't quite help but wait with held breathe as to how that's going to go. We've been told that she's very unlikely to need to come out early if things look ropey at that scan, but we may end up with more regular monitoring.

This week I had a midwife appointment (That would normally have been at 28 weeks but it seemed a bit silly to be poked and prodded twice in one day and both my Midwife clinic and Consultant clinic are on Thursdays) I had more bloods taken, urine sample was sent to the lab as a precaution, and whilst I was there my Whooping Cough Vaccine was booked. Baby is measuring a bit small by feel (27 weeks), but as the scan results were fine I'm not too worried, we'll wait and see how things are at the 32 week scan.

I ordering the fabric and kits to get started on the nursery this week (check out Monday's Nursery post for more on this if you haven't already read it!) and had been planning to get the last of the clothes dying over and done with, but as they were unable to catch a glimpse to check the gender at last weeks scan my husband's a bit nervy-b about the idea of me dying hosts of stuff pink (and I do have to admit I see his point) though I'm starting to ponder about a nice Turquoise colour for some of it, we probably have plenty left still to dye...

We also made the final decision on the breast pump situation. Having contacted Medela I got a fairly noncommittal 'well if you're not sure about it's safety and milk has got into the pumps motor you could buy a new one but it canaan be cleaned...' in response, which was a long way from the 'yes it will definitely be safe to use for your second child and can be made sterile' kind of confidence that I would have been happy with.... I'm hoping that breastfeeding goes without a hitch this time and that we might not even need to consider a pump, but if we do need to use a pump, I know we can use the Symphony (hospital grade, closed system) pump at the hospital and I touched on this is a previous post, but after a lot of research, and speaking to Breast Feeding peer councillors and health staff we decided to go with the Ardo Calypso pump. It's one of the few closed system pumps that you can buy over here that you won't need to take a mortgage out to be able to buy. If money was no object I'd potentially have got a Medela Symphony pump as we've used it in the hospital and it was absolutely fantastic, but I didn't want to hire a pump as the cost mounts up considerably if you end up using it long term, and they're thousands of pounds to buy new.

The other fab thing about the Ardo Calypso (beside the fact that it's actually in the grand scheme of things not that expensive and it's a closed system so I can sell it on with considerably less guilt, though as a disclaimer it, like most other closed pumps that aren't hospital grade, is still technically a single user pump.) is that it comes with a selection of different sizes of breast shell. I know you can get different sizes for some of the other brands, (Medela definitely do different sizes to the one that comes in the kits you buy, the hospital gave me a small pumpset when I was using their pump) but they're not particularly easy to get hold of especially if like me the idea of phoning customer services to speak to a stranger makes you want to faint so I ended up using the wrong size shells with my old pump, the ability to grab all the sizes out of the box and work out categorically which one is the best for me is great, and then getting replacements of that size is equally easy to do on the website if I wear it out.

I did look at a few other closed system pumps, namely the Ameda Lactaline as advertised in the Mum to be Bounty Pack. This pump has some fantastic reviews, it has 32 combinations of speed and suction to help ensure the optimum pumping for you and has 7 breastshield funnel sizes, I managed to find some of these on the Ameda website but not all (not sure if this is because out of stock items aren't shown on the website or because not all sizes are available on the website) but they're not cheap, and at a pump that costs £119.99 (£149.99 for the double) that seemed a bit steep to me. (Note: mother care had this on offer when I looked, and it may still be on offer at £129.99)

Another pump that I looked at was the Lansinoh Affinity Pro, this can be used as a single or double pump and has everything in the box to do so. It has a 2 phase suction system and you can switch back and forth between the two. It has an RRP of £149.99 but when I was looking at it the mothercare website had it for £112.49 (Note: search for 2 in 1 Lansinoh pump, not Affinity Pro) which is a really good price, and it has some great reviews, the only problem people seemed to report is that it's quite noisy, but I have to admit I expect a certain amount of noise with any pump that has a decent suction on it.

Unrelated to pumps, but Lansinoh do disposable breast pads that are individually wrapped, they're a bit more expensive than the supermarket own ones, but they're great for popping in your bag when you're out and about, their Lanolin is also something I would consider to be a must have product for sore nipples!

The last pump I looked at was the Philips AVENT Comfort. Comparing against the other pumps it's noticeably more expensive at a whopping £265 on the Mothercare website for the double pump. It does however come with a soft massaging cushion in the breast shield to stimulate milk flow, and does away with that slightly awkward need to lean forward when pumping. It also comes with a travel bag, but the substantial difference in price did rather put me off and I didn't look much further.

Looking at the breast pumps on offer did remind me that with a breast pump comes the need for sterilisation facilities. Our Tommee Tippee electric steam steriliser warped over use, also by the time we'd finished using it a single cycle would produce suspect looking yellow water, and the cycle took way longer than the advised time, so despite having been in storage since we stopped using it for Boo, it is not going to be any good to use this time round. I found the need to fill it then set it going and give it time to cool down to be quite frustrating, especially when waking up in the middle of the night to find that it hadn't run so there were no clean bottles, frustrating when you've just pumped, hell on earth when you have a screaming baby who is in desperate need of formula! So we've decided that a Milton steriliser and some tablets would be more convenient to be able to sterilise stuff as I went, doubly so when pumping and needing to sterilise 8 - 10 times a day!

One of my lovely Mumsnet ladies alerted me to a deal on the totsbots website, so I'm passing the tip on: the Papoozle sling is reduced down to £20 in the clearance section (it's worth taking a look in the clearance section to see if there are any left, but there were two designs available when I posted this) it's a stretchy fabric wrap but a bit different to the usual miles and miles of fabric that I've seen elsewhere, it has a waistband with two lengths of fabric attached to it that you bring up across your chest and across your back and then tie at your front, and then a second piece of fabric that goes over the whole lot once the baby is in. It's much simpler than the other wrap we have which is a Moby wrap (an iconic miles and miles of fabric wrap!) and looks a bit more secure with it, we got ours out and had a go, even Boo had a go, and everyone agreed that the Papoozle is the way forward, up to and including charley bear who got used as a makeshift baby!

So that's the round up to this week guys. Check in next week to see what comes in my Project B box and hear all about week 30!

#Pregnancy #BreastPump #ThirdTrimester