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WHEN DO I START PUMPING?This is a bit of a loaded question as each mother and baby dyad are different and their needs are specific to their family dynamic. Ideally, mom and baby will exclusively breastfeed for AT LEAST the first 2 weeks. If you have a shortened maternity leave (6 weeks or less), I would start pumping at around the 2 week mark. Before then, get use to your baby and let your baby get proficient at breastfeeding. If you have no medical reason to start pumping, don’t rush it.Why would you not start pumping immediately and start massing a frozen breastmilk stockpile? Well, there are couple of reasons.OVERSUPPLY IS A BIG PROBLEMRemember Prolactin? Remember how I said the more you feed in the first 1-2 weeks, the more receptor sites your body makes? Well, that includes the effects of pumping. If you are breastfeeding your baby on demand and pumping like a maniac, you are placing surplus orders for milk. The idea of breastfeeding on demand the first few weeks to determine your supply is to allow baby to tell your body how much milk he needs. It is specific to you and your baby.But isn’t more milk always better? No. Too much milk is a huge problem. Oversupply can lead to engorgement, clogged ducts, mastitis, thrush, and ultimately early weaning because it makes breastfeeding an absolutely miserable experience.It can also effect baby. When there is too much milk, letdown can be fast and overwhelm young babies. They literally are getting waterboarded by your breastmilk. Infants come off gagging, sputtering, and sometimes will refuse the breast. Many swallow excess air while they attempt to keep up with the deluge and end up being very gassy colicky babies. Many babies will adopt a shallow painful latch for a quick escape.As an oversupply survivor, let me tell you too much milk is not a good thing. If you think you have oversupply, check out THIS LINK where I dig in deeper to signs, symptoms, and SOLUTIONS.HOW DO I START PUMPING?The best way to introduce pumping while exclusively breastfeeding is to start slow. Pick one feed time that you will consistently pump after breastfeeding the baby. Morning tends to be a good time to do this as Prolactin levels are elevated at night and most women find their supply to be greatest first thing in the morning. Feed baby as normal and then after the feed you will pump for 15 minutes. At first, you will not be getting much milk because your body has equilibrated to make just enough to feed your baby. By pumping, you are putting in an order for more milk in the future. If you are consistent, your body will eventually reward you with more milk.WHAT IS NORMAL OUTPUT?Initially, it is not abnormal to get 1/2 an ounce or less from both breast combined in an after feed pump session. In fact, on average most women with established milk supplies can only expect to pump 1/2-2 ounces in a pump session. Pumping output is frequently misinterpreted as an indicator of LOW SUPPLY. You can click THIS LINK for more information on potential causes of Low Supply.The breast pump is not nearly as effeciant at extracting milk from the breast as your baby is. It is normal to not get enough milk from a single pump session to constitute a “feed.” When you first start pumping, it is expected to get small amounts. Women often feel compelled to put away a large stash of frozen breastmilk before returning to work. While it is important to have a few days worth of milk put away, you by no means need a freezer overflowing with breastmilk.When you return to work, you will be pumping at intervals that match baby’s feed schedule. In other words, whenever baby should be eating, you should be pumping. The reason you need a stash is to have a back up store incase life gets in the way. Perhaps you have a crazy day at work and you are not able to pump as frequently as you would have liked. Or maybe you drop a whole bottle of pumped milk on the floor (been there)!Then there is my personal favorite, your babysitter decides to feed your baby and OBSCENE amount of milk one day and leaves you without any backup. Not to throw my dear husband completely under the bus, but one night he fed our 3 month old son 7 OUNCES of milk IN ONE FEED! I about flipped my lid when I found out. My friends, these things happen and that is why we all need a bit of a backstop.HOW MUCH DO I NEED IN MY FREEZER?What you don’t need is extra milk in the freezer to be supplementing your baby with everyday. If you have a normal healthy supply, what you pump at work, should be divided up and be your baby’s feed the next day… EVEN if it is less than you would normally feed the baby. Why?Lets say you are gone from 9-5 every day and baby eats before you leave at 8, then at 10, 1, and 4. This baby normal gets 3 ounces a feed so would need 9 ounces a day but you only pump 7. Many women believe they need to to be thawing 2 ounces from their stash everyday to make up the difference. The problem with this plan is that your baby is getting use to a larger volume of milk but your breasts are not getting an order to an equivallent amount of milk. You are creating a supply and demand issue and using up your stockpile at the same time. This is why many women find themselves falling behind with breastfeeding once they return to work.Instead, mom should take her 7 ounces and divide it up for the day. Does baby just go hungry? No, you make up for it in different ways that will help boost your supply. You can fit in a 4th pump session for a week and see if your pumping output catches up with baby’s demand. Some babies will simply cluster feed when mom comes home to play catchup. This is a double win because baby rapidly catches up on any missed intake and he boosts mom’s supply while he is at it. Some women will feed the baby and then do a quick pump session before going to work. This again gives a little extra milk for baby during the day and it puts in another order for mom’s body to make MORE MILK.The point is, you do not need to have a months supply of frozen breastmilk in your freezer. You need to have enough to cover you if you have a bad week. Life happens, especially when kids are in the mix. Give yourself some wiggle room but do not drive yourself insane trying to stockpile a freezer full of breastmilk.For More Information on returning to work and Pumping, head over to the FULL POST. I discuss need to know aspects of supply and demand, introducing a bottle, and paced bottle feeding for the breastfed baby.Access to my Free Printables HERE

Because you’re human. It hurts, it sucks, and it takes a while to ease up.Understand it’s just a normal grief stage and keep up the good work staying safe and away from your ex. Just file it away as part of the grieving process—not something that needs to be acted on. Be your own counselor and remind yourself of that every way you can think of. Post-it reminders to just let the feeling just be feelings—not a sign of anything more than that. Inspirational screen savers, an inspirational journal with writing prompts, there are so many things you can do—feel free to go overboard. It has taken me a year to find the right journal, but the free printables on Pinterest taped to your fridge work too. ;)

3D printing is a collection of technologies that all try answer to a question, "What is the best way in which to make any individual physical object by building it up layer by layer?" With 3D printing you typically build a loaf of bread slice by slice.The technologies all work differently, but one of the most common FDM (Fused Deposition Modelling) works with a printing head being fed a plastic filament (usually ABS, the same plastic that LEGO is made from).A 3D file is checked by software to see if it is printable.The software then slices the file and sends it to a machine.A plastic filament is fed through the printing head.The filament melts and the head then deposits it on a build platform.The head moves around depositing the material so that it makes up the bottom slice of the object.The head returns to its starting position and the build platform is lowered.The head then builds the new layer on top of the first and this is repeated until the object is done.For a DIY simulation, squeeze a tube of toothpaste out on your hand.If we were to build a wine glass shape we would encounter a problem. If we wanted to print the bowl of the glass the plastic would go all over the place. Because of this, advanced machines (and soon also desktop machines) also deposit support material. With support material the print head has two extruders, one that deposits build material and the other support material. So when building a wine glass you would actually build a cylinder shape that extends to the furthest reaches of the bowl of the glass.The print head would extrude build material for the parts of the layer that would end up being the wine glass and also extrude lots of support material so that once an overhanging structure has to be built the build material can be built on top of that. So you end up with a cylinder of plastic that has your wine glass in it. You can then use a water yet or a bath of solvent (there are lots of ways) to wash away the support material and you are left with your final object.Here is a video that shows how this process works (disclosure, video is made by Materialise a company I worked for):Here is another video by Shapeways (disclosure, I used to work there also) showing you some support material and its removal:FDM gives you high dimensional accuracy, but the parts are generally less attractive than those made with other technologies.Selective Laser SinteringSelective Laser intering or Laser Sintering is a different process whereby a fine plastic powder (PA12 similar to Nylon) is deposited and a laser sinters the parts that will become your model. The rest of the powder acts as support. A new layer is then applied and the process repeats itself. You are then left with a block of fine powder that holds your parts. SLS has a jeans like feel to it and has great mechanical properties, but the material is porous so it absorbs dirt and fluids. Above is a UAV wing built with SLS.DMLSYou can also 3D print titanium and steel with DMLS (Direct Metal Laser Sintering) which works in the same way, but with titanium powder. Here you can see how a jaw implant is made:DMLS gives you metal parts and very high strength, but in addition to the support coming from the unsintered powder, additional support structures have to be made because of the high temperatures acting on the part. These have to be removed by hand using a flex or other machine tool.EBMElecton Beam Melting (EBM) works with a directed beam of electrons. EBM has rougher surface texture than other processes, but this makes it ideally suited for implants. Over 30,000 orthopedic implants are made each year with EBM.3D PrintingThe actual correct name for all 3D printing technologies is additive manufacturing, but the public has chosen 3D printing as the term. 3D printing is actually the name of one set of technologies derived from the MIT 3D printing patent whereby a printing head (the same as in your Hewlett-Packard printer) goes over a layer of powder and binds this material with a binder. You can print color with this process and this is what the Zcorp machines do. Using the same technology, but with a more complex process, ExOne can print metal. Zcorp parts have color, but they are fragile. ExOne makes metal parts cheaply (a steel wedding ring is $8), but it has lower dimensional accuracy and requires quite a lot of time comparatively.Voxeljet uses the same technology to print sand and PMMA and this process is used for casting many pumps and other industrial machinery. Voxeljet currently has the largest 3D printer in the world which has a build volume of 4 x 2 x 1 meters.StereolithographyStereolithography was actually the first technology that was commercialized and it was invented by Chuck Hull at 3D Systems. Lasers build up and object in a bath of resin. This process gives you great smoothness and nice looking parts, but it requires a post curing step and support structures have to be removed by hand. In the photo above, you can see the support structures holding up a replica of King Tut's mummy (note the lattice support structure holding up the head). SLA parts are also typically less resistant to the wear and tear of the real world and used for things like prototypes because they look good and look amazing when finished. An example at the Citroen GT car interior and dash seen below, the video shows you a lamp made with SLA.Envisiontec(Disclosure, I currently do consulting work for Envisiontec) Whereas nearly all 3D printing technologies work layer by layer there are exceptions. With Envisiontec Digital light processing is used (same technology as is found in DLP projectors and DLP TV's). A liquid resin is cured and made solid by a DLP projector projecting an image of a voxel (volumetric pixel) on it. The size and shape of the resulting printed voxel can vary and depending on the image. Envisiontec can not make really large things, but it makes small highly detailed things such as custom hearing aids, dental implants and molds for jewels. Above you can see a build tray of hearing aids. Over 10,000,000 pairs of hearing aids have been 3D printed. The second video is in German, but it does show you how the technology is being used by dentists.ObjetObjet works when a photopolymer is deposited by an inkjet printing head. The resulting layer is then cured with a UV lamp. Traditionally the problem with Objet was that parts made with it were very fragile, but they have been improving the materials. The most interesting thing about Objet is that it can do multimaterial 3D printing, so you can make things with different densities and hardness for example. The razor handle below can be made flexible in parts and rigid in other parts while having soft pads where you hold it, all in one print run (funnily enough, the razor below might be a case of copyright infringement because Gillette has patents covering the making of 3D printed razors, 3D so this may mean that this is a shape you are not allowed to make. Patent EP2266727A1 - A method of forming a functional razor cartridge and a functional razor cartridge)Why is 3D printing useful?3D printing lets you make unique shapes quickly without start up costs. In traditional mass manufacturing you spend eight weeks making a mold and tooling and have to wait eight weeks for your things to arrive from China. A mold may cost you anywhere from $10,000 to $200,000, but once you have taken the time and expense to make this mold it can spit out a million identical things at a high rate for a very low cost.With a 3D printer an object has to be built up individually in a machine. As soon as you have the design you can start printing. But, because of the cost of the materials and the cost of the machine and the space the part takes up in the machine (purchase, interior volume and speed) your thing will typically be more expensive than an injection-molded item. So a 3D printed lamp might cost you $80 while the injection molded lamp would be $1. But, with 3D printing you could make thousands of variations of this lamp and print all of these out without additional costs or time, each costing $80 (larger lamps will be more expensive, and there may be a cost for customizing the design).3D printing excels in making unique things. Things that only need to be made once, things that are individualized, things that are only meant to be beautiful for one person.Why is 3D printing revolutionary?With 3D printing you can print close to the customer or even in your own home. Because many of the things that surround us are mass manufactured these things suck. They are meant to be produced in their millions because that's how these mass manufacturing processes work. So, they are meant to appeal to a large number of people without satisfying anyone's needs. With 3D printing you can make and design unique things and make things for a single person. You can also produce shapes that can not be made by any other means. By manufacturing differently you can produce things on demand or iterate and test your design while continually making better things. We can also work together and share designs and improve them using software and in so doing improve the quality of all things. We will also be able to democratize manufacturing and potentially let anyone make anything. This will have a fundamental impact on our world.For more information you can check this answer:Why is 3D printing said to be the third industrial revolution?3D printing industryThe 3D printing industry is a $2,000,000,000 industry that has been growing by 26% per year in revenue since 1989. While the media focuses on home 3D printing almost the entire industry is business to business.Many companies use 3D printers to prototype things. They use them to test designs and develop products faster. Other companies use the technology for short run parts, spare parts or low volume production. It is used in car racing to make parts and also in car customization and in such things as the Veyron dashboard. Parts on the Dreamliner and Airbus A380 are 3D printed and it is used in medical prototypes, surgical guides and implants. Wherever there is a need for a unique item with a specific design 3D printing can be found. At its very core the promise of 3D printing is as a wish fulfillment technology that will let us dream up any thing and make it.What are some of the limitations of 3D printing?The machines are too expensive and not reliable.Materials are not strong enough.Many 3D printed parts do not look good enough.It is too hard to design for 3D printing.The blank canvas problem means we are often not inspired or indeed fear creating something.Machines are not fast enough.Many parts are not smooth enough.etc.More in depth informationIf you would like to know more about the topic, there are more answers that you may be interested in:What will be the future implications of the advancements in manufacturing technology, as described in the Feb 12-18th, 2011 issue of The Economist (magazine) cover story The Printed World?How does 3D printing work?Which companies are using 3D Printing technology to develop successful commercial projects?What are some of the coolest things made by 3D printers?How will an increase in the ubiquity of 3D printing affect the environment and conspicuous consumption?Which 3D printing company will be the industry leader in 10 years?What are the strongest materials in 3D printing that is widely available?What are the technology trends driving the development of the 3D printing industry?Joris Peels's answer to In what ways is the advent of 3D printing good and bad for the environment?Will 3D Printing Change the entire copyright landscape?What software should one learn in order to fabricate using the most commonly available 3D printers?