Reviewed – MAM manual breast pump

I may only have been breastfeeding for a couple of months, but having a good breast pump has been an essential throughout – helpful when feeding wasn’t going well and I wanted to ensure Minnie was still getting the breast milk, useful to give me the occasional break and vital to help my body wind down milk production after I stopped feeding regularly.

And along with a Philips Avent manual pump, passed on to me by a friend, and an electric Medela pump which left me slightly bruised, I had been sent a MAM manual breast pump to review for the blog.

There’s lots of nice touches which make it stand out, including a dial which lets you choose your suction strength – ideal if you’re getting used to the pump or feeling a bit painful, but letting you speed up expressing if you need to. The angled funnel also turns 360 degrees, and while I don’t think I particularly made use of the feature, it’s bound to come in handy at some point.

Admittedly the first time I tried the pump I didn’t have any success, whereas I was able to express straight off with the Avent one, but once I’d got going I was getting a similar amount from each. The soft pads made it very comfortable and although the handle was stiff, I suspect it would become easier to depress with more use – the other had effectively been broken in for me!

The four parts also break down easily to be sterilised, and it comes with two anti-colic bottles (one 130ml and one 160ml) plus two flow rate 1 teats, and two sealing discs. The bottles are self-sterilising, although I’ve actually only just realised this from looking at the website…

So far, so good. But inevitably, nothing’s perfect. The pump comes with a DVD guide, including instructions and a breastfeeding video. All very high-tech and lots of helpful info but when I first put it together, I never seemed to be in the same room as my computer and when I finally fetched it, the DVD ended up crashing my (admittedly ageing) laptop, so I’d actually have preferred a basic paper version to refer to.

The bottles should still be coming in handy now I’ve moved to formula, especially as Minnie seems to like the slightly wider flatter teat which fits snugly into her mouth. But the fact that the bottle is made of two sections, and you have to screw on the bottom (although I’m not sure if this function is to make it easier to clean or because of the anti-colic valve) means that it always seems to leak very slightly, no matter how careful I am to fix it on properly.

It doesn’t make them unusable but if I’m out or I have a clean alternative to hand, I’ve found myself choosing another make to avoid getting drips everywhere. It’s a shame as it’s obviously a nice product, and at least one other mum I know uses MAM products very happily. But despite this, the little niggles mean I’m unlikely to make them my first choice in future.

Available from Amazon, Kiddicare.com and www.mamonlineshop.com for £35.75.

Image courtesy of MAM