There’s something slightly uncomfortable about watching your wife and bedroom turn into a cow in a milking parlour; yet it is apparently quite necessary.

In all honesty, my limited experience of breastfeeding and expressing milk tells me that it is quite important. Firstly because it means that I, Daddy, can get involved with some of the feeds and actually have that experience, but also because if you produce too much milk it turns out that your boobs can turn into stones – leading to all kinds of breastfeeding trouble.

We unpacked the Haberman Baby Breast pump from its beautiful, snug and well organised carry case, did all the necessary sterilising and I preceded to set it up. Once I had moved off the bed and out of the dimly lit bedroom, the instructions were quite simple to follow, particularly with regards to setting it up. There are a lot of bits to look over, so you need to make sure that you assemble it correctly.

The electric side to this breast pump is great. It has 2 options or phases, which I will describe as fast and slow. From what I’ve experienced, and when I say that I mean it, as I did test this out on myself first, the fast setting wasn’t that effective. It did suck, but even on the highest setting, it didn’t seem that strong. The concept behind this is that it imitates the initial phase of a baby sucking when they have a rapid sucking motion.

The slow setting, which just has a small pause between ‘sucks’ seems to have a greater suction and that worked like a charm for us. Nearly a pint in 10 minutes! (That’s not true…but it did work brilliantly.) This imitates the longer suckling that you get with a baby mid-feed.

Having these 2 phase options is a really great selling point of this pump. It means that it simply has a greater possibility of meeting a wider range of needs. It also means that you have excellent control over your expressing. If you want a little then you can set it to do so and likewise if you require a barrel load. The small roller also adds to your suction control increasing this further.

There is also a memory function on the pump so you can set it to meet your exact requirements. I think this function is for those experienced expressers amongst us. For us, it’s a case of whack it on and suck it out. Along with the memory function comes an alarm clock which you can set to what I like to call, “dairy O’clock.”

The pump runs off of AA batteries but like most things, batteries never last very well, so they have supplied a DC adapter as well. This is just as well as it does drink batteries like Gazza does beer! The actual ‘cone’ that covers the breast seems to be made of silicon so there’s no rubbing or irritation.

We did also try the hand pump adapter. This however, was rather unsuccessful. The biggest difficulty we had was that the handle itself wouldn’t spring back into position ready to be pumped again. Obviously, when you’re looking to pump, this made it much harder. The other consideration with hand pumping is that the suction just didn’t seem as efficient and when you’re hooked up to a pump and feeling like your in a cow shed, you don’t want anything to slow things down. In all honesty though, I think that you wouldn’t buy this breast pump if you wanted a hand pump, so it isn’t a great issue.

Overall, this breast pump is excellent and works very well; especially when connected to the mains. With quick and easy assembly, a quality & hygienic storage bag and a highly efficient, realistic pumping motion, it is well worth considering when looking to purchase a pump. The 2 phase option is a big selling point. If you want to take a look at the website for more info, click here.

The HabermanBaby breast pump receives an official Dad Network star rating of 4.5 / 5