Usually, when “ripped” is used as an adjective to describe how a person looks, it’s meant to be a compliment. So if you tell someone that they look “ripped,” you’re most likely telling them that they have very tight abs or chest muscles, or very sculpted and defined arms. Well, I discovered for myself yesterday what it meant to have “ripped” nipples, and I mean that in the literal sense, as in.. yes, I actually (accidentally) ripped the skin off the sides of both of my nipples. Unfortunately, this had nothing to do with muscles or looking sculpted. It had to do with pumping with improperly fitted flanges and my own cheapness/laziness.

My Legendairy Milk cups came with 24mm and 28mm flanges, as did my primary Spectra pump. I have no idea why these are considered standard flanges sizes considering that over 80% of women have nipples smaller than 24mm, but hey, it is what it is, and likely a way for these companies to make more money by up-charging you anywhere from $10-20 for a smaller flange size. I had pumped while on the go just twice before with the 24mm flanges and these cups plus my Baby Buddha portable pump, and the output was never as good due to the flange size, but I accepted it just for the convenience. Legendairy Milk did not create 17mm flanges for someone like me, as their smallest one was 19mm, so I thought I was out of luck until I discovered the Maymom brand, which has flange tunnel inserts to hack and place into these flanges. I felt cheap, though, and wasn’t really sure how much mobile pumping I would be doing, so I neglected to buy these $15 inserts when I discovered them about two weeks ago.

Well, I pumped while in the car ride to Philly, and the entire time, I had no idea that I was damaging my nipples. I think I have just gotten so desensitized to all things nipple related that I didn’t even feel the skinning of my nipples as it was occurring. Plus, with all the bumps in the road, that is likely how the cups got off centered with my nipples, which then caused the damage. I had read so many stories in the pumping mamas Facebook group about women who had gotten bruised, split, cracked, bloody, and ripped nipples from using the incorrect flange size, but luckily for me, this had never happened. How does this happen, you might ask? So with flange sizing, it’s like Goldilocks: you can’t have your flanges be too small or too big; they need to fit just right for the perfect combination of both maximized comfort AND maximized output. If the flange is too small, you will bruise and split your nipples that are getting constricted. If they are too big, you risk your nipple getting pulled too deeply into the tunnel, thus creating friction on one side of your nipple, which then results in what happened to me — skinning, peeling of your nipple skin.

I didn’t even realize this had happened until I removed the cups when we got to the hotel room. I took them off and immediately noticed that the top of my left nipple was a deep purple color. And then upon examining both sides of my nipples, I realized that the skin was peeling off to reveal a raw, exposed under layer. The pain finally started settling in, and everything and anything that rubbed against my nipples hurt. I applied shea butter to help soothe and repair it, but this rawness will likely last for a while until my skin repaired and healed. Luckily for me, my nipples aren’t bleeding. After physically taking care of this, I logged into my Amazon account and purchased the stupid $15 flange inserts for the cups. This pain and injury was not worth saving $15 for.

This is the shit mothers go through just to feed their babies. Pumping mamas truly have it the hardest. You will never quite understand how annoying and taxing it is to be a pumping mom unless you actually do it yourself.

Although I got the Legendairy Milk cups to go along with my portable Baby Buddha pump in early March, the problem with this setup is that it’s not really 100 percent wearable: the Baby Buddha pump is portable in that it’s the size of a smart phone and you wear it on a lanyard around your neck, but it actually comes with bottle attachments. That’s what necessitated buying the Legendairy Milk cups for me to hack and wear with the pump. The cups are way, way too big to be discreet (they hold 8 ounces of milk EACH; who the heck pumps 16 ounces of milk in one pump sitting?! Whoever you are, I am super jealous of you!), plus there are still wires attaching the cups to the pump. Well, shortly after I purchased this combination to create a wearable pump for myself, lo and behold, Willow, a high end brand of wearable pumps, releases their next generation of wearable pump that is completely wireless, where you can operate the pump fully from an app on your phone. Each cup is essentially its own breast pump. The programming for stimulation vs. expression mode can be adjusted for each breast, so in case one breast performs better than the other, you can adjust (this is not the norm for the average breast pump, including the Spectra that I own; these assume you want the same settings for both breasts). In addition, this Willow Go pump allows you to customize what size of a cup you want, so the cup you could choose could be smaller (five ounces per cup sounds more discreet and reasonable than eight!). It’s a bit too late for me to get this pump, especially since I already bought the Baby Buddha and have only used it about five times, but if I had to do this all over again, I’d sell my Baby Buddha and buy the Willow Go pump.

One gripe I had with wearable pumps is that you can’t really do breast compressions with them. I also can’t see the milk spraying out, so I wasn’t sure if I’d know when my let down reflex started. Some women can actually feel their let down, and up until the last week, I was not able to feel it. But amazingly, as I’m currently in my 24th week postpartum, I actually started feeling my letdown, which would alert me to change the setting from stimulation mode to letdown /expression mode to maximize my milk output. Now, without even looking, I know when to switch the mode. This has helped me when I’ve needed to pump during work calls. I make sure to position my web cam so that it just reached under my neck, so no one has any idea I am pumping. In addition, I have my Zoom sound setting on so that background noises are blocked out, so no one can hear the subtle “burrrr” sound that my pump makes while on. I’ve never appreciated working from home more than while pumping milk. Pumping in a sad, windowless pumping mom room at work would have been miserable, not to mention I’d be time constrained.

Endless women in my Facebook pumping mamas group have raved about the Willow Go, how it’s really changed their pumping lives because they can literally pump anywhere and no one will know, as these cups are small and flat enough to fit into their bras, so they don’t make pumping women look like they got breast implants. And more impressively, women have also said their output is comparable if not more than using their Spectra pumps, and no need for breast compressions! It’s a $330 investment, so definitely not cheap or a potential impulse buy. If I ever do this again, I would get it, but for now, I’ll stick with my Spectra and my occasional Baby Buddha use.

Our nanny grows callaloo, a West African cousin of spinach in her backyard, among other vegetables. She said she will bring us some since it’s just sprouting now. She said she knows I will like it… because my baby farts a lot, so she knows I eat a lot of vegetables.

“Mommy eats lots of vegetables and fiber!” the nanny exclaimed while feeding the baby last week. “That’s why Kaia farts so much! So much fiber in the breast milk! In the booby milk! So much good stuff in this booby milk for baby Kaia pookie!”

It’s debatable how much of what a breastfeeding mother eats will end up in her breast milk. It’s already been widely established that alcohol, certain medicines and drugs, among other things, can get into breast milk in traces, but the concentrations of which are still debated. Either way, I try to eat a wide variety of things not just for myself, but also in hopes that our baby will develop an affinity for all these different foods. I’ve intentionally eaten nuts daily, hoping she won’t have any nut allergies. I especially hope she will love all leafy green vegetables and mangoes.