A Cracking Breast Pump (Avent Isis Breast Pump)

Member Name: leopard79

Product:	Avent Isis Breast Pump
Date:	09/01/03 (547 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Portable, Discreet, Good range of accessories

Disadvantages: Awkward to assemble, Often breaks, Poor design in parts

The Avent Isis Breast Pump consists of an assembly of pieces made of clear and white plastic which click and screw together to form an easy to operate and comfortable breast pump. Although there are a number of parts they dismantle simply to allow for easy cleaning and sterilising. Assembly takes a few goes to get used to it and you may occasionally have to reassemble it if the suction doesn't seem to be working properly, it's likely that it just didn't seal the first time.

Sadly, the plastic used to form the breast pump is quite brittle. Within the first six weeks of using the pump the piece that joins the bottle to the pump had cracked in two places resulting in milk leaking out the stem and a piece had snapped off the main body of the pump preventing any leverage and rendering the pump useless, had I not been fortunate enough to have spares from a friend.

From speaking to other members of the site it seems that Avent Customer Service is very efficient in replacing parts that have broken, I still feel, however, that the parts shouldn't break in the first place.

Another problem that has occurred a couple of times is in the design of join between the pump and the bottle. The neck screws clockwise onto one piece and anticlockwise onto the other, this may not sound like it would cause problems but you can unknowingly nudge the bottle in one direction, while you are pumping or carrying it, with the palm of your hand and occasionally it is enough to unscrew one or other of the joins causing the bottle to drop, spilling your hard-earned breastmilk all over your lap or your carpet.

On the other hand the pump is easy and comfortable to use, it comes with a silicone insert which makes expressing a lot less painful in those early stages.

You can only pump one breast at a time which means that the whole process takes between thirty minutes and an hour depending on your milk flow. It can also leave your hand aching
and leaves you less able to entertain the baby while using it. It is designed to be one-handed, though if you have larger than average breasts you tend to need to use one hand to pump and the other to hold the pump onto your breast.

It is very portable, and the £40 pump comes in a insulted travel bag so you can keeps all the pieces together and keep the milk that you've expressed while out and about for around four hours instead of under one. It is also reasonably quiet and is ideal if you are expressing milk in the middle of the night next to a sleeping partner.

I personally became too frustrated with the pump to use it as my main method of expressing milk so I opted for an electric breast pump which cost £76, made by Ameda which I found online, but can be recommended by your midwife, GP or Health Visitor. This allows you to express from either one or both breasts, cutting the time down to less than 15 minutes which, at 4am, is a Godsend. I still use my Avent pump when I'm visiting friends and family though, as it is more portable and discreet than the electric pump.

Summary: