Aim to spend 15 to 20 minutes hooked up to the pump to net a good amount of breast milk (some women will need 30 minutes or more with the pump, especially in the early days). Pump until the milk starts slowing down and your breasts feel well-drained. Be sure to clean the breast flanges after every use.
It may take about 15 minutes to pump both breasts instead of 30 minutes or more to pump each breast separately. Double pumping also provides very strong stimulation to keep a good milk supply. Prolactin, which is an important hormone for making milk, becomes very elevated when mothers double pump.
The average pump session lasts 25-40 minutes.
Some parents with substantial storage capacities or delays in letdown may need more than 35 minutes, while others with quick succession letdowns or small storage capacities may need less time.
You'll pump until your milk flow tapers off and your breasts feel drained. That usually takes eight to 15 minutes with a good double electric pump and up to 45 minutes with a manual pump. You'll know you're done when no new milk appears after about 2 minutes of pumping.
If the first month of exclusive breastfeeding is going well, your milk production dramatically increases from about one ounce (30 mL) on Day 1 to a peak of about 30 ounces (900 mL) per baby around Day 40.1 Draining your breasts well and often naturally boosts your milk during these early weeks.
In short, you should pump until milk isn't coming out any more. Or, if you're trying to boost your supply, pump a little while longer after the milk stops flowing.
Why it happens: Low milk supply can be the result of not pumping enough, pumping too soon after a feeding or not nursing between sessions. You may also have a low supply if you're not pumping long enough, if you're using the wrong type of pump or you're not drinking enough liquids.
The 120 minute rule is that, generally speaking, when you are exclusively pumping, you want to spend at least 120 minutes (2 hours) per day pumping. How many sessions you would spread that 120 minutes across depends on how old your baby is. With a newborn baby, you might want to do eight 15 minute sessions.
At one week, you should be able to pump two to three ounces every two to three hours, or about 24 ounces in a 24 hour period.
If you're exclusively pumping, on average, you should try maintain full milk production of about 25-35 oz. (750-1,035 mL) per 24 hours. It may take some time to achieve this target, do not worry about hitting this on day one! Babies may take more milk from the bottle than when breastfeeding.
Increase pumping frequency
Generally, moms should be pumping every 3 hours. Pumping more often can help stimulate breasts to produce more milk. Moms can try pumping both breasts for 15 minutes every two hours for 48-72 hours. Then moms can return to their normal pumping routine.
An important thing to remember is that if you are pumping to increase your supply, pumping longer will not help. It is more effective to pump more frequently for a shorter amount of time. For instance, pumping for 5 minutes every hour is more effective than pumping for 20 minutes at one time.
It's not uncommon for moms to be told that they shouldn't pump for 20 minutes. Why is this? The concern behind this advice is that pumping too much might cause oversupply in a nursing mother. For women who are nursing, having a large oversupply can cause problems with overactive letdown and foremilk/hindmilk imbalance.
For many moms, 10-15 minutes of pumping is long enough. Once a week, add up the milk you pump in a 24-hour period. Write it down and compare your totals each week.
You may have brief pain (10-15 seconds) at the beginning of each pumping while the collagen fibers in your nipples stretch. You may have slight tenderness of the nipple. Some women may have an uncomfortable sensation when their milk releases or "letting down" which may feel like tingling or "pins and needles."
Yes, it is. When you pump milk from your breasts and feed it to your baby, you are breastfeeding. There's an extra step, and it's not direct, but your baby is being fed from your body.
It's important to remember that your baby is much more effective at getting milk from your breasts than a pump will ever be. A healthy, thriving baby will get more milk than you a capable of pumping.
The maximum volume of milk in the breasts each day can vary greatly among mothers. Two studies found a breast storage capacity range among its mothers of 74 to 606 g (2.6 to 20.5 oz.) per breast (Daly, Owens, & Hartmann, 1993; Kent et al., 2006).
How do I know whether my breasts are empty? There's no test or way to know for sure. In general, though, if you gently shake your breasts and they feel mostly soft and you don't feel the heaviness of milk sitting in them, you're probably fine.
“The standard advice is to pump for 15-20 minutes. Even if you don't have milk flowing that entire time, you need to pump that long to get enough nipple stimulation. Also pumping at least 5 minutes after your milk stops flowing will tell your body that you need more milk; thus increasing your supply.
Understanding the Role of Prolactin
Interestingly, prolactin levels have a typical 24-hour cycle — just like the human body's circadian rhythm. Prolactin peaks in the early morning hours around 2-5 a.m., while the lowest prolactin levels happen in the late afternoon to early evening.
Between lack of sleep and adjusting to the baby's schedule, rising levels of certain hormones such as cortisol can dramatically reduce your milk supply.”
If a woman can't pump, engorgement can lead to plugged ducts, mastitis and even abscesses, sometimes requiring hospitalization and intravenous antibiotics.