Delhi / World Breastfeeding Week: To choose breast feeding or pumping

A mother's breast milk supports immune responses in her newborn till six months, further decreasing the risk of infections, malnourishment, allergies, and other complications.

However, one of the key challenges in this aspect is that lactating mother's often don't get ample maternity leave. Therefore, they push themselves to store breast milk and feed it to the child later.

Breast pumps are quickly gaining admiration in this regard. In fact, Khushboo Mehra, a working mother of 8-month old Adya, opted to go for pumping is the best thing ever because it gives you the freedom to do your job and have a life. I was sceptical of trying breast pump at first as I had skin infection around my breast area but once I started using it with my gynaecologist suggestion I realised there is no such danger that comes with breast pumping .

In fact, the process is really easy," said Khushboo.

To make this cumbersome process easier and safe, lactating mother's must keep a few points on their fingertips.

"The breast pumps need to be sterile and breast pumping should be a 'zero contact' process, i.e. any part of the pump that comes in contact with the breast milk should be away from any human touch", recommended  Dr.Ranjana Becon Consultant gynaecologist, Columbia Asia Ghaziabad.