You must have seen this.

A picture of a mom pumping using a hands-free pumping bra while continues working on her laptop. Or perhaps, while having a conference call.

No doubt, hands-free pumping bra lets us multi-task while pumping.

It saves a lot of time because we don't see pumping like a hard chore in which you need to stop whatever you were doing.

And also, it saves a lot of breastfeeding relationships where initially moms cannot afford to have pumping break, but thanks to these wonderful pumping bra, they can still continue providing milk for their babies while pumping and working at the same time.

But there's one caveat here.

Some moms prefers to do hands-on pumping.

There's a similarity, in which these moms also needs to have their hands free from the need of holding the milk bottle all the time.

But they don't meant it for multitasking with other job. Rather, they want to get most milk from their breasts using hands-on technique.

The question is: 

"Can those hands-free pumping bra be used for hands-on pumping?"

In this article, we will discuss the pros and cons of top 8 popular hands-free pumping bras (in regards of whether they can be used for hands-on pumping).

Before we dive in, first of all, we need to know, what does hands-on pumping entails. Here's a good article​ about it, but let's summarize some important points here:

1. Massage (breast compression) while double pumping. This is the very basic step, studies have shown, when a mom does breast compression, she can get as much as 2 oz extra milk compared with if she's not doing breast compression.
2. Massage again focusing on areas that feel full
3. Hand-express or single pump / hand-pump switching for one side to the other while doing intensive breast compression until the breasts are drained as much as possible.