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So you want to boost up your milk supply.
You want to get a quick result.
And suddenly you found this term 'power pumping'.
You have been hearing moms swore by it repeatedly.
They said it can double your milk supply in just several days.
Sounds too good to be true, don't you think so?
But you are still not sure..
And scratching your head with all the uncertainties.
How am I going to do this?
When?
For how long?
And... Does power pumping really work? Is it worth my time?
Welcome to The Ultimate Guide of Power Pumping.
This guide will teach you ALL things you need to know about how to use power pumping to increase your milk supply.
This includes: samples of power pumping schedules, case studies, plus tips and tricks to make it easier to do.
Let's get started!
More...
- 10 things you should know before pumping breast milk
- How to choose the correct breast shield size to maximize your pumping output
- 10 Ways to stimulate let down quickly
- Tips and tricks: effective pumping strategies to pump more milk
- How To Use Spectra S1 breast pump for maximum output
- How Much Milk Should You Be Pumping
- What To Do If You Are Not Pumping Enough Breast Milk
- How to maintain milk supply while away from baby (and culprit of sudden milk supply drop)
- Power Pumping To Increase Milk Supply
- 7 Ways to Pump Breast Milk Faster
- Hands-On vs Hands-free Pumping
- Nipple Pain While Pumping
This post is part of PUMPING 101 Series. You may check other articles in this series:
Here's a quick navigation if you want to jump right to certain section.
First of all...
What is power pumping?
Power pumping is a pumping strategy that works by repeatedly emptying your breast very frequently, mimicking cluster feedings that a baby does during growth spurt period.
Power pumping does not replace ALL your pumping or nursing session, rather it is done to replace at least one of your pumping session (if you're away from baby), or to be done in addition to direct latch (if you're solely nursing).
Here's the most popular recommendation how you can do one power pumping session:
- Set aside one hour to do your power pumping session.
- Double pump using the following schedule:
- Pump for 20 minutes
- Rest for 10 minutes
- Pump for 10 minutes
- Rest for 10 minutes
- Pump for 10 minutes
- Do at least one power pumping session every day until you see an increase in your milk supply.
- To get a better result, do more power pumping sessions in a day. Two sessions are the most popular option (because well, we need to do other things as well right!)
Ok, that's the most popular recommendation.. but can we do it differently?
Yes..., in fact, those 20-10-10-10-10 pattern is not a strict one.
Jody Segrave, Daly, IBCLC mentioned that: based on research studies, a lactating breast usually empties in 10-15 minutes, and so you can opt to do the following sequence instead in an hour:
- Pump for 10 minutes
- Rest for 10 minutes
- Pump for 10 minutes
- Rest for 10 minutes
- Pump for 10 minutes
- Rest for 10 minutes
Cannot allocate a full one hour to do the power pumping?
Jody said that you can split it into two 30-minute sessions, in which you do this in each session:
- Pump for 10 minutes
- Rest for 10 minutes
- Pump for 10 minutes
Now, perhaps some of you will question, will the splitting affects the result of power pumping?
Actually no.
Remember:
"The essence of power pumping: to mimics baby's frequent feeding during a growth spurt"
So as long as you can frequently empty your breast, despite on different timings, that should work, too.
Wanna hear some proof?
Here's how Diana West & Lisa Marasco describe power pumping in her book "A Breastfeeding Mother's Guide to Making More Milk":
- Place your breast pump in a convenient location at your home.
- Whenever you pass by, use it to pump for 5-10 minutes.
- Do this every 45 minutes or so.
- Aim to pump like this at least 10 times a day
Can you see the similarity between the two approaches?
It's not about how long you pump, but rather how frequent you pump.
Let's see another definition by Stephanie Casemore, the author of "Exclusively Pumping Breast Milk: A Guide to Providing Express Breast Milk for Your Baby".
In her book, Stephanie describes power pumping as pumping every two hours round the clock for at least 2 days.
See how Casemore suggests pumping every 2 hours daily (for at least 2 days), which means pumping 12 times a day, and West suggests pumping at least 10 times a day.
So, frequency does matter.
On another note, Casemore also use another term, 'cluster pumping', which is defined as pumping frequently for a shorter period of time, for example: pump 10 minutes every half an hour for a few hours (thus, it's done only at a portion of the day rather than a whole day).
This is similar with what is described in kellymom:
"Sit down with your baby and your pump, and nurse and pump every half-hour to hour for several hours."
Are you confused by now?
I hope not, ya...
Let's summarize some of the important points here.
Power pumping means frequent pumping, this is done to mimics baby's cluster feeding in a growth spurt period.
You can do it in three ways:
- Set aside one or more time blocks (e.g. One hour block) to pump 3x with breaks in between, done once a day or more.
- Do pumping round the clock, aim for at least 10 times. If you do every two hours, that's even better.
- Or do the cluster pumping variation: set aside a few hours block, do frequent short pumping in 30 minutes to 1-hour interval.
Keep doing this until you notice an increase in your milk supply, typically within 3 days to 1 week.
Does it matter how long is the pumping duration?
Different mothers have different preferences.
Some prefer a combination of 20 and 10 minutes (as per the general recommendation).
Some other prefer 10 minutes blocks for both pumping and rest time (review Jody's statement), while some other prefer 15 minutes, making it a one and half hour session, i.e.:
- pump 15 minutes
- rest 15 minutes
- pump 15 minutes
- rest 15 minutes
- pump 15 minutes
- rest 15 minutes
There may be times you can only afford 5 minutes to pump, that's perfectly fine too, as long as you keep the frequency of pumping (review how Diana West define power pumping above).
Now let's move to the next big question.
Can I do power pumping with a single electric breast pump?
I have seen a lot of questions whether you can use a single electric breast pump to do power pumping.
In general, it is most recommended to use a double electric breast pump so that you can express milk from both breast at the same time, thus, minimizing the time you need to focus on your pump.
However, power pumping with a single breast pump is still possible.
Here's how (I'm using an all-10-minute schedule to make it easier but you can adjust the pumping duration to suit your needs better).
- Pump right breast for 10 minutes (do nothing on left breast)
- Switch side, pump left breast for 10 minutes (rest time for right breast)
- Switch side, pump right breast for 10 minutes (rest time for left breast)
- Switch side, pump left breast for 10 minutes (rest time for right breast)
- Switch side, pump right breast for 10 minutes (rest time for left breast)
- Switch side, pump left breast for 10 minutes (rest time for right breast)
Total time needed: 1 hour. So, you are still spending 1 hour to pump, but rather than having a 10-min rest in between double pumping, you switch side and keep pumping, and repeat until each breast gets pumped 3x.
When to do power pumping?
A lot of moms prefer to have one or two uninterrupted time blocks to do power pumping.
That means pumping while:
- Your baby is fast asleep (night time or early in the morning)
- If you are regularly away from your baby, you can replace one of your pumping routines with a power pumping session, say: during the one-hour lunch break. Or some women prefer to come much earlier than usual and do power pumping once they arrived in their workplace.
- Some others prefer to blend the power pumping schedule with their daily routine. This is especially true if you decide to do pumping 2-hourly round the clock. If it happen that the baby wants to nurse on your power pumping schedule, you can do pump and nurse simultaneously (then switch sides) or nurse first until your baby feels content and then pump.
Since prolactin (the hormone in charge of breastfeeding) is usually at its highest past midnight until early in the morning, some moms prefer to do power pumping in these time window.
Now, one last big question.
Does power pumping really work?
You see, because power pumping takes a lot of time commitment, obviously you want to make sure that you are doing something that works, right.
Let me tell you the fact.
The success of power pumping highly depends on several factors:
- How old is your
baby. The older your baby is, the more established is your milk supply (means your breast no longer produce milk-making cells), hence it takeslonger time to see the result. Atcertain point of time (which is different for each individual), a mom may stop responding to breast pump stimulation, and at that point of time, power pumping may not help. - How effective the milk removal during power pumping is.
The goal of power pumping is to empty your breast as often as possible. Remember the golden rule of milk production: empty breast leads to faster milk production, full breast signals slow milk production.
If your breast is not thoroughly emptied during pumping, you'll have less chance of success.
So, make sure to fully drain your breast by adopting hands-on pumping techniques.
If you are interested
- How long you are committed to do power pumping.
If you do power pumping for only 1 day, then stop, you won't make it.
The fastest result I've seen is by doing power pumping for at least 2 days. Some moms can only see results after a week or two.
So, if you want to succeed in power pumping, brace yourself and give it a go for at least 1 week before you switch back to your regular pumping routine.
- Mother's body limitation.
Some moms simply can not produce enough breast milk because they have inadequate milk-making cells, popularly known as insufficient glandular tissue (IGT).
For these moms, there's a limitation on how much breast milk their cells are able to make, and thus,
The only thing that may help them is to increase the pumping frequency. But again, that does not guarantee them to have a full supply as other moms have.
If you suspect yourself have a serious milk supply issue like this (e.g. unable to fully breastfeed from the beginning but keep trying), I suggest you seeing a lactation consultant, so that you can have a proper breastfeeding assessment to determine what's the next step to achieve your goal. You can read more about low milk supply issue in this article series (4 articles in total).
Some resources believe that power pumping is only effective in the first 12 weeks postpartum.
But case studies that I'm going to share with you below prove the opposite.
Let's review them one by one.
RELATED: 20+ Things I Did To Boost My Milk Supply (with Efficacy Scores!)
Case Study: power pumping results
Note: if no details mentioned in a particular case study, that means she's using the one-hour block (20-10-10-10-10) schedule.
From 5 oz to 9 oz within a week
This mom used to pump only 5 oz per session.
After diligently power pumping twice a day (early morning and night) for 1 week, she was able to increase her pumping yield to 9 oz.
Note that she follow each pumping session with marmet (hand expression).
Baby was older than 1 year old.
(Source)
This mom made a beautiful infographic about power pumping, you can check it out here.
From 3 oz to 8 oz per session in two weeks
This mom did power pumping once a day (one last pump before bed).
She used the following pumping schedule: pump 20 mins-rest 10 mins-pump 10 mins-rest 10 mins- pump 10 mins. OR pump 15 mins-rest 15 mins-pump 10mins-rest 10 mins, pump 10 mins, rest 5 mins, pump 5 mins.
Result: in two weeks, she was able to increase pumping yield from 3 oz to 8 oz and replenish back her freezer stash.
Are you planning to build up your breast milk stash before returning to work?
Click here to get the complete guide (PS: FREE freezer stash calculator)
From 1.5 oz to 3 oz in three days
Alisha used to get 0.5-1.5 oz in one pumping session.
She did power pumping once (one hour block) in the evening for 3 days and after that, she was able to pump 2.5-3 oz per session.
From topping up with formula to no formula ever!
This mom was not producing enough breast milk for her baby and need to supplement with formula.
She did power pumping for 3 consecutive nights plus pumping one hour post feeding,
Result: she was finally able to go through her very first day without formula supplementation, yay!
From drops to 50 ml per pumping session
This mom adopted power pumping definition from Casemore, so pumping 30 minutes every 2 hour round the clock during the weekend (48 hours).
Result: she used to get only drops each pumping session. In fact, total milk expressed during all 48 hours of power pumping was only 75 ml. However, the first day after power pumping she was able to get 50 ml in just one pumping session.
Baby was at least 6 months old.
From less than 5 oz to 10 oz per pumping session
This EP (exclusively pumping) mom used to get less than 5 oz before power pumping. Her freezer stash was also close to 0 bottle.
She did power pumping by pumping 15 mins every 2 hours round the clock during the weekend (48 hours).
Result: The effect was not instantenous. On Monday she began feeling her breast is fuller. By the end of that week, she was able to pump around 10 oz in one session and fill up her freezer with breast milk stash again.
Baby was at least 9 months old.
(Source: my best friend)
From 3 oz to 7 oz with cluster pumping
This mom did cluster pumping by pumping 5-15 mins every 30 minutes in three-hour block. Here is her clusterpumping schedule:
From 8 am to 11 am (rest 30 minutes interval):
- 8.00: pump 15 minutes
- 8.30: pump 5 minutes
- 9.00: pump 10 minutes
- 9.30: pump 5 minutes
- 10.00: pump 10 minutes
- 10.30: pump 5 minutes
- 11.00: pump 15 minutes
She did two blocks like this every day and did this for 4 days consecutively.
Result: she used to get 3 oz average pumped milk, and after cluster pumping, she was able to pump 7 oz in one sitting.
(Source)
Maintain no-deficit freezer stash after a serious depleting stash
This mom did a cluster pumping-nursing twice a day:
- Morning: Pump 10 minutes, rest 10 minutes, pump 10 minutes, rest 15 minutes, nurse 10 minutes
- Bed time: nurse 10 minutes, rest 10 minutes, pump 10 minutes, rest 10 minutes, nurse to sleep.
Result: She used to have a daily stash deficit of 5 oz, but after the cluster pumping-nursing attempt, she was able to add 36 oz to her freezer stash on top of her baby's demand.
(Source)
Power Pumping Tips n Tricks
Here are some tips and tricks to make power pumping easier for you and also, to increase your chance of success.
1. Know that breast milk can stand in room temperature for up to 8 hours (depending on your ambiance room temperature). You don't need to change bottle or wash pump parts in between pumping session. If you are not comfortable with 8 hours, changing the bottle and washing the parts every 4-6 hours are generally pretty safe. If you want to do power pumping for 48 hours, keep your pump parts in the fridge and only wash them once at the end of the day. Yes, it's perfectly fine.
2. Use a good quality double electric breast pump. While it is possible to do power pumping with a single breast pump, it is more time consuming and tiring. For building and establishing milk supply, it is recommended to use hospital-grade breast pump that is built for durability and strength. My recommendation is Super Genie or Spectra S1.
Two heavy-duty breast pumps that's great for power pumping: Super Genie and Spectra S1
3.Use a hands-free pumping bra so you don't need to hold the flanges and bottles all the time. You can make a DIY hands free bra for yourself, just use your nursing bra, or invest on a good quality pumping bra.
4. Aim for let-downs. Guys, you need let-down to get the milk flowing. So always try to get let-down for each of the pump session. For the 20-min session, I usually aim for at least 2 let-downs. For the remaining sessions (10-min), I aim for 1 let-down before leaving the pump on expression mode. If you have difficulty getting your let-down, check out my let-down stimulation tips.
- 5. Make sure your breast is drained thoroughly by applying hands-on pumping technique. And don't forget to follow your pumping session with hand expression / manual pumping.
RELATED: Hands-on vs hands-free pumping } Which One You Should Choose
6. Apply a lubricant before pumping to avoid nipple soreness and warm compress (I use Lavie Massager) can help stimulating the milk flow better.
7. Do not look at the amount of milk. You may only get drops while power pumping and it's totally fine. You may not pump enough milk at first. However, remember that the goal is to signal your body to make more milk, not to accumulate a lot of milk instantly.
8. Do not worry about the color of your breast milk. Breast milk may seem to have a tinge of blue, green, brown, pink, yellow, and even black! The tint of breast milk can vary quite a lot.
9. If you decide to use the one-hour schedule, choose a timing where your baby is fast asleep or when other people are available to attend to your baby. That way, you won't be distracted too much between finishing your pumping and caring for your baby.
10. Use the breaks in between pumping to do your daily routine. If you do this early in the morning, that may mean having a shower, breakfast, preparing for work, etc.
11. Be persistent. Don't loose hope. Some people noticed increment of milk supply within days, and some others only after two weeks. Give it at least one to two weeks to see the result. Combine your effort with maintaining a healthy diet. Stay hydrated and incorporate lactogenic foods and herbs in your daily meal plan.
12. Be flexible. Remember the essence of power pumping is to imitate your baby's frequent feeding during a growth spurt. If you can't afford one-hour straight for pumping, break it into two 30-mins sessions, or, combine pumping and nursing, or pump right after you nurse (even if it's just a short 5-mins pump). You don't need to follow other people's schedule strictly. Find the one that's ideal for you.
13. Make it your me-time. Rather than seeing it as a must-do commitment, use this opportunity to pamper yourself. Combine power pumping with watching your favorite movie or TV show or time to catch up with your friends in social media.
14. Think positive and stay away from stress. I know it's easy to say but very hard to do, but please remember that stress can hurt your milk supply badly.
15. Pat yourself. You've done your very best for your baby and be proud. You're an awesome mama!
I hope this guide helps you to understand power pumping better and you can apply it to increase your milk supply. I try my best to cover all the details as much as possible, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask me in the comments and I'll be glad to help.
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Jen says
This is great info Rina! I linked to it under my power pumping article when I got a question about how long to pump each breast. Thanks!
Rina says
Thanks, Jen. Glad that this article can help you answer your readers’ power pumping question.
Crystal says
True words. You are doing amazing work! Thanks for sharing your wonderful posts ?. Until I started the powerpumping with domperidone my baby may well have fed on blood from a stone. We tried the skin-to-skin, the constant feeding, the teas, the massages, but basically my milk never came in in sufficient quantity. Just as I was about to quit, a friend suggested domperidone. I was able to stop the domperidone after a while and supply held more or less steady. ❤️
Kristen says
Hi just so I am clear, if I do the power pumping and it works, should each of my normal pumping sessions show an increase? And if so, how long after that increase do I stop doing the extra power pumping session? Thank you!
Rina says
Yes, your normal pumping output should increase.
It depends on you. Some moms have a ‘target’ how much milk she would like to pump every single day. So, once they reach that stage, they stop doing power pumping.
Some wants to see until when the amount keeps increasing, and once it does not increase anymore, they stop.
Others, due to erratic work schedule, simply cannot keep regular pumping daily, so they chose to do power pumping every weekend.
I hope this helps =)
shay says
I have a question should I power pump during a pump season are should I fully pump and drawn both breast of all milk b4 power pumping I’m confused on that part you can email me at sheenamartin88@gmail.com
Thanks for your time and reply
Rina says
You don’t need to pump first before power pumping. Essentially, just do power pumping during your pump session. Since power pumping usually lasts longer than a typical pump session, it will empty your breast better and train your body to make more milk.
Rani says
Thanks Rina! I tried power pumping today because I got mastitis a couple of days ago and feel like my supply took a hit. However, by the time I finished, my little one was ready to nurse again and I felt like I didn’t have enough for her. She ended up taking a bottle of expressed breastmilk. Any suggestions on how I can do this better?
Rina says
Perhaps try to do power pumping when your baby take a longer nap (or after bed time) so you have ample time between once you finish pumping and when your baby wakes up.
Alternatively, if you feel it difficult to have such a longer gap, break your power pumping session into 2. e.g. 30 mins / session, but do it twice a day. Does it make sense?
Rani says
Thanks! I’ll give it a try!
Patrina says
Hi, I am a little bit confused. So, let’s say I start my 20-10-10 power pumping session at 7 am. By the time i finish the pump session, it will be 8 am. Will my next normal pump session be at 10 am or will it be 11 am if my usual schedule is 3 hourly? The time ticks when i start my pump session or after i finish? Thanks!! Great article by the way 🙂
Rina says
Hi Patrina,
If you pump 3 hourly, that means the interval between you start pumping again is 3 hour. If the first session is 7 am, the next session would be 10 am (not 11 am).
Hope this is clear =)
Rina
Kerri Landis says
Do you pump on the slow setting or fast setting?
Rina says
You mean for power pumping or pumping in general?
Slow or fast setting will be depending on mom’s preference, so it’s personal choice.
I myself do better with fast setting.