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A Letter to the Handi-Craft Company about Dr. Brown's Electric Breast
Pumps
Sponsored Links
August 29, 2007
To Whom It May Concern:
On June 20, 2007, I had a baby girl. A few weeks prior to her birth I decided to purchase 2 of your Dr. Brown’s electric breast pumps because I would be returning to work full time after 6 1/2 weeks maternity leave and wanted to continue to breastfeed exclusively. I saw ads in magazines advertising your products and also read a couple of testimonials on breastpumps.com (where I purchased my pumps) that were positive. I considered getting a Medela Pump in Style, but the testimonials for that product were not good. So after reading good reviews (there were only 2) and seeing your appealing advertisement claiming “patented technology” and claiming the newest greatest way to pump-I decided to purchase.
First of all, when I received the pump(s) I was disappointed how loud they were. For about 2 1/2 weeks before I went back to work I pumped one side while my baby fed on the other so that I could get a little bit of extra milk to put in my freezer before she went to daycare. I had to cover the pump up with a heavy blanket each time because it was so loud I thought it would damage my poor little 4-week-old baby’s hearing. It was only like 12 inches from her head and was very loud.
About 2 weeks after I went back to work I noticed that the honeycomb liners were getting miss-shaped. I read that if I boiled them they would go back to their original shape. I did just that-and it did not work. After a couple more days it got so bad that I was not getting a seal and hence-no suction. I called immediately to your customer service and spoke with Millie on 8/24/07. I told her about the liners and told her I had only been using my pump for not even 6 weeks. She was surprised. She told me she would send me a box of the liners and I told her that they needed to be overnighted because I could not go on like this for the two or three days that she told me it would take to get the liners to me. That day I came home from work severely engorged because the liners were not functioning properly and I was unable to remove the milk properly. I received my new liners on 8/25/07.
On Saturday 8/25 my husband and I had a concert to go to outside of town. We had my mother-in-law to baby-sit and I was going to have her give the baby a bottle of my pumped milk while we were gone and I planned to pump in the car sometime during the night. Saturday afternoon I was rigging up my pumps for the evening with batteries and realized that they were not running up to speed on the battery power. I used brand new batteries and the connection was good. I tried this with both pumps and they were both running slow. I took the battery off and plugged them back into the wall. They ran fine. Put the batteries back in and they ran slow. I figured that would never work and so halfway through my concert I had to drive all the way home and pump at home. This concert was outdoors and there was no place for me to go to plug the pumps in there. If the pumps are not going to function properly with battery power, then you just shouldn’t even have it as an option. And you should really consider the car adapter. There are several pumps out on the market that have car adapter options and I think that would be great. Sure would have helped me out on Saturday night. I was hugely inconvenienced Saturday and was not happy about it. We paid $40/ticket for this concert and I shouldn’t have had to miss over an hour of it because I had to run all the way home to pump.
Around this same time over the weekend (8/25-8/26) I also noticed that one of my pumps was making strange noises. It sounded like a scratchy noise. I read in my instruction book that I got with the pump that sometimes it will make strange noises, and that it was “perfectly normal.” This was not a whistling noise and it was not changing or going away at different vacuum settings. On 8/26 I looked closely and noticed that the one pump was not only making strange noise, but was running at a slower pace than the other one. I was petrified that the pump might die and decided that I would call first thing Monday morning to ask about it. This did not appear to be “normal.” My pumps have never been dropped or mishandled in any way. I keep my pumps in a nice bag that I take back and forth from work each day. I treat them like royalty-because I would be absolutely screwed without them. I pump first thing in the morning before I start work every weekday. I got into work Monday morning and pumped around 7:30 am (CDT) and it was during this pumping session that the pump that was making strange noise died. It still makes sound, but it has no rhythm and there is absolutely no suction. It makes a continuous noise now and there is no pulsing. I was furious. When 8:30 am rolled around, I called your customer service and spoke with Millie again. I told her about this and she gave me some options. She offered to replace the pump or pumps and also gave me the option to send them back as a return.
Because of this pump dying, I had to leave work (I work in Brandon, SD-which is outside of Sioux Falls) to go RENT a pump from the hospital home medical store. I cannot go an entire day without pumping. And going to my child’s daycare to feed her is not an option for me because it is a 20-minute drive to her daycare one-way. It took me 25 minutes (one way) to get to the hospital home medical store, then I had to drive to my house to get my Medela parts, and then I had to drive all the way back to work. I was absent from work for 1.5 hours and had to use my personal time accordingly. The only reason I had Medela parts was because when my daughter was born she had jaundice really bad and had to be on formula only for the first 5 days after she was born and I had to pump to get my milk to come in. The lactation consultant at the hospital had not heard of my pump and therefore couldn’t endorse it or guarantee that it would work to get my milk to come in. She recommended I rent a Medela and use it until I could breastfeed again when my milk production started. I rented the Medela pump and used it for the time until my baby’s jaundice was gone and I could breastfeed again. Hence, I had the parts the hospital gave me. It’s a good thing I had those from the hospital or I would have had to buy my own along with this rental fee. I do not have an abundance of personal time left to my name at work as I have just returned from maternity leave. I also do not feel that I should be wasting this time because my 6-week-old pump died on me. I need all the time I can get for when I have a sick child, etc. and have to leave work for that. Also, this pump rental is costing me $65.00/month. I had no other option. I do not have any friends or family members that even have a breast pump that I could borrow. And the one friend that I do have that has one is currently using it.
I am writing this letter because I am extremely dissatisfied with my experience with my Dr. Brown’s pump. I have had nothing but trouble, headaches and disappointments with it. I wanted to share my story with you and ask that your company reimburse the $65.00 that I had to spend on the pump rental to me. I feel that this $65.00 is a fair asking amount considering I am not including the time I had to take off work, the gas money driving all the way to Sioux Falls to take care of this rental or the personal inconvenience I incurred. $65.00 is peanuts to a big company-and is much more valuable to a young couple with a new baby. I never in a million years would have thought that a pump that I spent $280.00 on would crap out on me after less than 6 weeks of use! And it wasn’t just one part-it was the liners AND the motor! I do not need to spend everyday worrying about this pump not working for me or worrying that something will go wrong with it. I am having ENOUGH trouble with pumping at work and worries about keeping up with how much my baby is eating. I am pumping 4 times a day at work and I probably only get 7-9 ounces all day with your pump. Never did I get any more than that. My baby is eating 12-16 ounces in a day and I do not want to supplement with formula. I am really struggling to pump enough for her. I have had to squeeze in pumps in the evening and tons on the weekends. This still hasn’t helped me keep up. My daycare has already used 3 bags of frozen milk that I had as backup in the short 3 weeks that she’s been at daycare. I have maybe 50 ounces of backup milk in my freezer total. This will not last me long at this rate. Monday was the first day I had to use my rental pump (since my Dr. Brown’s died in the morning) and I got 11 ounces in only the 3 times I used it that day at work. Tuesday I pumped over 12 ounces and I am right on track to pump at least 12 ounces again today. It is quite obvious that this other brand pump is more efficient at getting the milk out than the Dr. Brown’s pump. The way I look at it, things can only get better from here. The more milk I get out-the more my body will produce. Using my Dr. Brown’s pump I was getting so desperate that I had gone as far as to purchase a bottle of fenugreek herb to try to boost my supply (thinking I actually had a supply issue-which I clearly do not). I had not taken any yet, but was getting to a point of desperation. It looks like since I am going to probably be purchasing a different brand pump that will pump more milk; I may not have to take the herb. I am glad that I finally found out that it wasn’t me that was the problem-it was the pump. I hate to say that I will be returning these pumps and will have to purchase another brand. It’s sad because I actually thought your pump was very comfortable. I guess I am going to have to sacrifice comfort for reliability and ability to get the milk out.
I hope that reading about the trouble I have gone through that you’re your company will take some responsibility for your product’s failure. Handi-Craft should make things right with your customer by reimbursing me for the inconvenient pump rental. I can provide a copy of the receipt for my pump rental if that is what is needed to receive reimbursement. I honestly feel that after all the trouble I’ve had that I shouldn’t have to.
Thank you for your time.
Amanda Bormann
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
USA
Many thanks to Amanda for sharing her experience with us
here. My reply to her:
Amanda,
Thank you so much for sending me a copy of this letter to Handi-Craft. I am so
sorry to hear of the trouble you have had. I hope your next purchase works out
better. Some women find they can only get the results they need (i.e. full
removal of milk and maintenance of milk supply) with hospital grade rental pumps
like the one you used. For them the best economy is to rent a pump all the time.
I know $65 a month seems steep, but if you consider that you may only need a
"really, good pump" for the baby's first year or less, you are spending less
than you would for infant formula, and your baby is getting a much more superior
product... your milk. After the first year, you could make-do with a less
efficient pump, because the baby will be eating so many solid foods, and your
supply will not be such a big issue.
It is my opinion that "we" still have so much farther to go to get breast pump
technology right. I have heard from a lactation consultant that insufficient
removal of milk can be a big issue with the more comfortable pumps like Dr.
Brown's and the Whittlestone. Then again, some women cannot bear the strength of
action on a conventional pump like the Medela--so what can they do?
Thank you for your permission to share your story with others.
~~Matia Bryson
webmaster@babylovesyourmilk.com
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