Activity #274: Make a terry pad for your pump parts

Marketing Mommy is a blogger in the Chicago area who has two kids born pretty darn close to mine. And we both had a victorious VBAC with #2, and, we are both in marketing, so we were like, totally best friends, even before we ever really had a conversation.

She works full time, so pumping is part of her every day life. I feel for her, because I so hated the pump and all of it’s parts when I worked outside the home during Julian’s babyhood. Also, there were random drips of breast milk on my pump’s carrying case and sometimes on my lap. Sorta gross, even though I’m not sure why.

Miss Marketing Mommy invented herself a solution. She called it the “Pump Parts Terry Bag,” and like a good marketer, she sells us on it by describing the problem it solves:

My breast pump came with an ugly black tote bag (which I don’t use), but it didn’t come with a good solution for toting all of the pump’s parts and accessories, the horns and valves that come into contact with milk and have to be cleaned between pumping sessions.

Since I pump twice a day, I was washing those parts with dish detergent and hot water and giving them a cursory drying with paper towels. But they never seem to get really dry.

I’d been keeping them in a gallon Ziploc bag in my backpack, but I didn’t like how fogged up the bag would become and I hated using damp parts. Also, I found that cleaning the Ziploc bag even once a week was a pain in the butt. And I was never positive that it was really clean.

Enter the Pump Parts Terry Bag!

This velcro-close bag, designed by me and sewed from an old towel by my sweet mother-in-law, holds all of my pump parts and doubles as a lap pad for me, protecting my work pants from inadvertent milk drips.

No more damp horns and I can throw it into the wash every couple of days!

Nice work, MM!

Related activity: The Pumping Project (Share your story!)