Theoretical Risk

When a friend who was about to have her first baby sent me an email with “breast pumps” in the subject line, I figured she was just looking for my usual two cents. Throughout her pregnancy, I struggled to offer just the right amount of information, to share my own beliefs and experience without being dogmatic or judgmental, and to provide honest encouragement, not platitudes. Tricky stuff in the lands of birth and parenting, where a friendly face can be the unwitting minion of those twin demons, fear and doubt.

As I read on, I suspected I had failed to do right by her with past advice, sensing the kind of retribution only bad karma can deliver. It was my turn to be bedeviled. How did a perfectly innocent email about the Pump in Style vs. the Purely Yours turn bad?

If you didn’t hesitate for a second to loan your personal use electric pump to a girlfriend or sister-in-law, you must not have read the warnings from the manufacturers or the FDA or La Leche. Like I didn’t. Turns out that most pumps aren’t designed to be shared, flying in the face of our compulsion as mothers to exchange our tips, our experiences, and our stuff with other mothers. The manufacturer Medela likens a breast pump to a toothbrush, and automatically voids the warranty if you share yours:

“Personal use pumps should never be resold or shared among mothers. The Medela Pump In Style has an internal diaphragm that cannot be removed, replaced, or fully sterilized. Therefore, the risk of cross-contamination associated with re-using a previously owned pump such as the Pump In Style cannot be dismissed, even when using a new kit or tubing.”

What’s the specific worry? Just of infecting our nursing babies and ourselves with bacteria like Staph and Strep, viruses like HIV and hepatitis, and other nasty bits from the realm of the unseen. Apparently, if milk or blood from a cracked nipple were to find its way into the pump’s mechanism, there’s really no way to disinfect it. I figured that if each user bought a fresh collection kit—the tubing that connects to the pump and the plastic parts that touch breast and milk—there would be no problem. After all, hospitals rent pumps to scores of women, and we know they never willingly put themselves in the crosshairs of the litigation gun. But their pumps are designed to be used by many, so can be thoroughly disinfected between users.