What makes any given Medela breast pump special? It is the two phase expression emulation of any of the Medela pumps that does it, with the exception of any manual breastpumps they make. What is two phase expression? Well, scientists over at Medela seem to have studied the way real babies breastfeed, and they’ve learned that babies don’t simply start suckling at the breast with evenly-timed sucks. There are 2 phases to a baby’s nursing pattern, called the let-down and the expression phases.

The let down phase is the first phase of nursing – this is where your baby will take quick, small sucks at the breast, immediately after latching on to the breast. This may continue for about 1-2 minutes, while your baby stimulates your body and your breasts to begin filling with breastmilk. The amazing thing is that this let down phase is critical to help enable a mother’s body to produce breastmilk during the 2nd expression phase.

The expression phase is the 2nd phase of breastfeeding, and this is where your baby will slow down their sucking pattern and go into a slower, more rhythmic pattern that will dominate how they feed for the next 5, 10, 15, or 20 minutes. It is in this phase that your baby has summoned the milk from your body and it begins flowing fast out of the nipples and into their mouth. Clever kids, huh?

So instead of simply creating a powerful breast pump that will suck your nipples right off your body, as long as it’s electric, a Medela breast pump will give you the most milk in the least time because the pump actually copies how real babies breastfeed more accurately than any other pumps out there that I’ve seen. And I think that this is the coolest thing to come to breastfeeding and breastpumps in a long time.