(I taught my kids to sing the ABC song while they wash, so now I sing the alphabet in my head every time, too. Use soap and water, and be sure to wash for at least 20 seconds.
There have been rare cases when babies have contracted serious and even fatal illnesses due to improper cleaning and storage of breast pump materials so it’s important to know the proper way to care for the tools that are providing life-giving nutrients to your little one. You don’t want those kinds of things tainting your baby’s food supply.
Knowing how to clean your breast pump properly is important for your baby’s health.Īs you may know from observing other areas in your home and elsewhere, anything that gets wet, warm and is closed off from good airflow runs the risk of harboring mold, mildew, bacteria and other yucky things that grow well in that type of environment. One thing I didn’t know, though, is how to clean the breast pump. I looked at it and thought, “What in the world am I supposed to do with that thing?” A friend taught me how to use it, and I also received some instruction from a lactation consultant with my first child. I can hear the characteristic whir of the pump in my sleep (is it weird that sometimes I feel like it’s talking to me?), but I still remember my first time seeing that pump. I’m a nursing mom for the third time, so my breast pump and I have had a long, intimate relationship. Whether you’re going back to work, heading out for the occasional date night or simply need to give yourself a break from nursing, your breast pump can be an indispensable tool in helping you continue breastfeeding as long as you choose. If you’re a nursing mom, you may choose to use a breast pump to provide breastmilk for those times you’re away from your baby. Orlando Health Heart & Vascular Institute.Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies.Request an Appointment Quick Scheduling with a Specialist.Patient Information Information for patients and visitors.Health Information View our Content Hub.Find a Physician Find a physician that meets your needs.Find a Location Find a location near you.Pediatric Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation.Pediatric Behavioral Health and Development.Pediatric Specialties Learn more about our specialties.We hope that their contraption is up to the task and receives FDA approval soon enough. The team is currently consulting with pulmonologists for the sake of reviewing their design and to improve it. FDA has already issued an Emergency Use Authorization so that ‘positive pressure breathing devices modified for use as ventilators’ thus allowing for such ventilators to come from wherever that they can during the COVID-19 pandemic. The team will still require FDA approval before their contraption can be used in hospitals. You can actually directly donate to their project using the email The group’s Facebook page says that they are only accepting Spectra breast pumps at the time being. After initial success with their idea, the four engineers have set up a Facebook page for promoting their work and are accepting donations in the form of Arduino circuit boards, breast pumps, and additional money for the sake of funding their project. The best thing about this whole approach is that within four short hours and a cost of $300, you can have a prototype ready as opposed to the hospital-grade ventilators that can cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per each unit. Brandi Gerstner said that breast pumps are ‘sanitize-able biomedical device’ that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and have been tried and tested and are known to be reliable. These local engineers started off with the idea of reversing the airflow from the breast pumps thus implying that air is being blown out of patients’ lungs. These four engineers hail from the University of Maryland’s Tech Port incubator as per a local WMAR2 report. That is where this particular group comprised of four engineers comes in with its novel approach to transforming unused breast pumps into ventilators. The world is currently facing off against the COVID-19 pandemic and during this, a shortage of ventilators is proving to be a big challenge that needs to be overcome.