My Free Breast Pump

Medela Advanced Personal Double Breast Pump

Lily was born before the breastfeeding provisions of the Affordable Care Act were in effect.  I remember the panic with which I sought out an easy hospital grade breast pump to rent. I rented my Medela Symphony from Babies R Us for $80/mo, which is apparently overpriced.  Whatever, because the silly thing retails for $1,500.  It didn't matter as long as it was in my hands.  I couldn't handle another difficult task on maternity leave.

Apparently, the recommendation is that babies switch to cow's milk at one year.  Not ever intending to switch from breast milk to cow's milk (insert hippie rant here), it didn't occur to me until recently that I would need to reevaluate my pumping expectations. We are closing in on one year, and I am definitely going to be pumping longer that I ever thought.  Longer than my boss ever thought, who asks me once a month, "So, how long are you going to be doing that?"  I told her a few weeks ago my realization that this was going to go on much longer that I expected.  But, for a woman who is privy to watching my crunchy food and beverage ways, this isn't a surprise.

I decided to see how a consumer grade pump would work for us, because it's supposedly free, right?  It just doesn't make sense to rent when I'm only pumping 30 minutes per day.  This opposed to the 320 minutes per day I was pumping when I first went back to work 9 months ago. 

I don't know anything about insurance beyond I have X benefits, and I hand someone my insurance card and they either want money or they don't want money.  Sometimes I get a bill later.  Sometimes I don't.   I read forum posts where ladies called their insurance companies and asked how to get a free pump.  I decided that I could do that.  I could call my insurance company and ask them how I would get free stuff.  I whipped out my outdated insurance card and called the number on the back.  The lady on the other end gave me three companies to call that they would cover, one of them being Edgepark, which is in Ohio.  Love supporting my homestate.  But the other two companies were local here in DC.  Love supporting local.

I decided to call Edgepark, because they touted that they would get all of the necessary paperwork for you by calling your insurance company and your doctor.  While I am sure they are making a boat load of money, I am really not good with doing things I'm supposed to do (like forms and stuff), so I decided to give in and go the easy route.  It wasn't exactly that easy.  I mean, it was, but I had to place a few follow up phone calls.  I don't have a doctor.  Primary care physician, whatever.  So, I asked if  our pediatrician or midwife would work.  I gave our pediatrician's information, followed up with him by email, only to find that he's out of the country for a couple of months.  Hippie doctors, yeesh.  Called Edgepark back to give my midwife's information, and though I'm not currently in her care, that seemed to be fine.  A few days later, Edgepark was still calling me saying that my order wasn't complete. Had to call them back again to make sure they had my midwife's information.  They did and called the office while I was on hold.  Everything was good to go.

There were three breast pump choices.  A Platex, Medela, and Ameda.  The Medela was out of stock and would take a few extra weeks, because it was the most popular.  I decided to just go with that one.  It doesn't appear that this model is the same as either of their consumer grade retail models.  This because it's provided by a hospital supply company.

Voila, in a couple of weeks, we had a new breast pump.  FOR FREE!  BAM. It works pretty well.  I think I like it better.  One of the touted features of the Symphony was the let down function that would change suction during a milk let down (when milk comes out). I wondered if I would miss this feature, but to my surprise, this new Medela pump has it, too.