Before I got pregnant, I swore that I wouldn’t buy special clothes for pregnancy and postpartum. After all, it was only a short season of my life, why should I spend the money on that? Then, I realized that this was the only time in my life I could truly, shamelessly, shop the pregnant lady section of the internet and stores and thought I should take advantage of that. On top of that, I realized that postpartum life had its own special needs, and my go-to wardrobe staples of knit pullover shirts and blouses just didn’t quite fit those needs anymore. Namely, I wanted to pump at work without having to completely undress and take my top off and sit half naked in a room where I may or may not get inadvertently walked in on. My workplace does not have a dedicated pump space, so, yay! After a bit of trial and error, I got my perfect formula down for dressing for work while pumping for baby.

Now that I’ve been using my Elvie pumps for a longer time now, I thought I would put in some updated thoughts to my initial impressions review. In general I’m still fairly impressed overall, and the quiet and discreet aspect of the pumps becomes more and more valuable to me the more different places I try pumping.

Elvie first came on my radar through a Facebook Mom’s group and since then I’ve been so excited to be able to try it out. It finally came back in stock in the US mid-July of 2019 so I finally was able to get my hands on it. Here are my first impressions and (very thorough) initial review.

Recently on my international work trip I found myself thinking a lot about how I would bring all my mom stuff (e.g., pumping stuff) with me everywhere and on the plane for a 15 hour flight. I needed something big enough to to fit all my pump stuff, including a large industrial strength milk cooler to keep everything cold, and ideally be able to carry on beside me in addition to a very large backpack I intended to keep in the overhead compartment. It had to be durable and lightweight. Something fashionable would be a bonus, as well as something expandable (in case I needed to bring back more than I brought over), and shrinkable to a reasonable size to double as a daybag if needed.

When I was pregnant, one of the best pieces of advice I got was from another experienced mama, who asked me “Do you have your pump yet?” Silly me, I thought I wouldn’t need my pump until I went back to work 3 months after the baby was born. I’d have plenty of time to figure it out, right? And she told me, “Just get it now. Trust me.”