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.

As a first time mama, one of the major stressors was figuring out breastfeeding, figuring out pumping, and going back to work while pumping. Pumping = hours of effort = not too much fun. It took many several months of trial, error, and experimentation to get my pumping setup optimized for me. I could have gone with everything that was out of the box but I kept tweaking and optimizing until everything was streamlined as much as possible! So now here’s my list of useful things to make pumping suck maybe a little less.