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A lactating mother needs all the help she can get. For that reason, alone, breast pumps – medical devices that help extract and direct breast milk from the mothers’ breast to feed babies (sometimes more than one) – are quite handy. A full-time commitment that a breast pump is, it often becomes difficult to choose the right breast pumps. Should you go in for an electric breast pump? How about a double pump? With a plethora of options available, it’s important to be informed on your choices. Here’s what you need to keep in mind to choose Breast pumps like a pro:

For many women, there really is a glow about them during pregnancy. After the typical early nausea passes and you begin to show, your face is full, your skin is clear, your figure is more voluptuous and even your hair is full and thick. You are fabulous and expectant, so you get a special parking spot for “Expectant Mothers.”

Then the darling bundle arrives. Most women experience a significant amount of fluid retention after birth. There is soreness and possibly pain. Hips take some time to settle back into their previous width and once your milk comes in, your breasts may seem enormous. They will likely leak if any baby cries. When your baby is about four months old, the hair that you retained during pregnancy will begin to shed in earnest, clogging all drains and bringing your vacuum to a burnt rubber stop. To top it off, now that you actually have a beautiful baby that you carry in your arms along with a diaper bag and a purse, you apparently no longer need a parking space close to the entrance. All these combined with sleeplessness can really dull that expectant glow you remember so well.

First and foremost, you will look back on your maternity jeans and the memories of your ta-tas-runneth-over and laugh. While not at all amusing at present, all these experiences are perfectly normal and temporary. You are among friends! While you are getting accustomed to your new daily rituals, remember that your body will take care of itself as long as you give it the right tools. Keep yourself hydrated. Take your vitamins. Eat good food. Breastfeed. Get some exercise. Strollers, slings and baby carriers are all excellent vehicles to get walking with baby. They love the soothing rocking motion and there is nothing like a perambulation to do the soul good – both of yours.

Beginnings are what happen at endings. Thinner hair and inconvenient parking are not so great but your newfound love certainly is. He will still twirl those thinner tresses with his fat little fingers and grin at you as you make your way from the back of the lot and you will find yourself glowing for a whole different reason.

Keeping on top of the laundry task ensures that you will never resort to reaching for a clean tank top to dry your face. This is what happens when you start one day off right by attempting to put yourself first but had procrastinated the day prior. Procrastination only serves to bite you on the behind in the time department.

These days, the relic of Monday Wash Day has morphed into the Seven Day Wash Week. Though average families have gotten smaller, somehow the amount of laundry has increased exponentially. By doing some every day, the task becomes manageable. Start your day off right by switching the load you washed the night before into the dryer. This may save the earth as well since you are using energy during off-peak hours. Only use this motivation if it helps you get the laundry started. If it only serves to send you into a panic about using heavy machinery during daylight hours and increasing the size of your carbon footprint, that information is to be ignored and forgotten.

Promptly removing a load from the dryer reduces wrinkles and makes the dryer available for what is getting done so efficiently in the washer. It is nice to admire all the beautifully folded clothes and towels in their completed glory, neat and tidy in the basket that fits around your hip. Unfortunately, no one will feel as proud of you as you do. Grant yourself a favor in disguise by putting it all away. Now the clothes in the dryer have an empty basket to go into and no one has to stir your folded masterpiece to find their skivvies.

Life is a never ceasing list of things to do. It is important to realize that no matter how much you do, there will always be more. This serves to remind us that we are alive but it is also necessary to occasionally stop. What makes the stopping all the more delicious is just a small amount of the going. Keeping the pedal to the metal in small daily doses will ensure that your brakes work when you need them most and that a towel, instead of a shirt, is hanging by your sink.

Working or not, the person who is generally in charge of stocking the various shelves and cabinets in your house must have a good handle on what cannot be done without. The Fly Lady says, “Nothing says I love you like plenty of toilet paper.” This is true for all households but it must be amended to include the other items that make life worth living or at least bearable when someone vomits at 3am and you successfully reach for the Gatorade and a clean pillow case.

Normally the basics fall into the “cannot live without” category but if you are operating at maximum capacity, things like another quart of half and half behind the one your absolutely fantastic husband just finished are the difference between starting the day off right, or, well, not. Making sure your necessities are stocked is part of a household running smoothly. This is especially important if both mom and dad are working but is paramount for the future either way. As your kids grow, lots will get easier but the hard stuff is always traded in for new hard stuff. They may sleep all night but they will be begging for sleepovers, a wholly different nighttime animal. They can read and write but their backpack takes twenty minutes to fill in the morning and no one can lift it.

A smoothly running household is a fluid thing. What works in infancy must be updated for preschool and each new stage. You can identify your necessities by noticing what jams the cogs and wheels in its absence. What creates a domino effect when there isn’t any? Clean dish towels, saline spray, Motrin, and hand soap. Tortillas and eggs. Any kind of ground meat, at least partially thawed. Always one more can than you’re using of some tomato product. Coffee. Half and half. That was already mentioned, wasn’t it? Some necessities are more necessary than others.

What are your necessaries?

The approaching holidays shed very bright mental light on the finite number of hours in the day. Suddenly the places to be and things to be done are endless and we find ourselves wondering, what is the point of it all? This happens whether you feel you know the “reason for the season” or not. It is simply what happens to all of us, especially when you can’t find the hot glue gun, had an epiphany at 3am to make the whole neighborhood jars of homemade soup mix and are determined to have good holiday fun with the kids stringing your own cranberry and popcorn garland.

When the sense of being buried alive in reams of wrapping paper and cookie dough looms, step back and take a moment to focus on what makes you feel alive and happy. It may very well not be making all your holiday cards by hand and that is OK just as it is if that is the sort of thing that makes you quiver with joy. Honor your family and the season by doing what creates a sense of pleasure in you, not necessarily what impresses others or makes them happy.

That is the ditch that many of us fall into. Certainly there are times to impress and please others. In fact, doing those things is often a great source of pleasure in and of itself. It is when it becomes your sole motivator that it poisons the intent. Your children will feed upon any happiness that you exude. It is their language of love. This is the gift they want the most. Just as they are happy to gnaw on a giant turkey leg (great pictures!) and play with the empty cardboard box instead of nosh gourmet stuffing and learn Mandarin on their new LeapPad, they would rather have you enjoying a moment giggling on the floor than you stressed out over sweeping it first.

Whatever side of the fence you are on regarding holidays and religion, it is impossible to deny the effect of love. Whether you think we were created or evolved, love is what we seek from the moment we come into the world. A quote from Mother Theresa says, “We must know that we have been created for greater things, not just to be a number in the world, not just to go for diplomas and degrees, this work and that work. We have been created in order to love and be loved.” The babies all know this and attempt to teach us with every drool-soaked grin. All they need is a reflection in you.

You have recently had a baby. You now spend all day with your hands in diapers, your boobs in a baby or a pump and your bum in pajamas. Now it is time to return to work. How is that going to happen?

To begin with, if you are planning to continue breastfeeding, stock your freezer with breast milk. Freeze it in two ounce increments and lying flat. It is very difficult to remove a little sack of milk that has frozen its previously warm self around the rods of the freezer rack. In addition, they are slippery and impossible to store together unless they are flat and will fit into a bin. This will also make it easier to store based on date; a fabulous little milk filing cabinet in your freezer! These are the things you now strive for.

The next challenge of going back to work is that those fabulous milk-factories go with you. Though you may have a freezer full of liquid gold, Jr. won’t be able to drink it from a sippy-cup. Within the first month, babies are usually able to handle the switch from breast to artificial nipple without any problems. Most nipples will work with a bit of vigilance on the part of whoever is feeding the baby. It will likely be easier if someone who does not smell like you, i.e. not you, attempts the first several bottle-feeds.

Another part of your previous life’s routine you may need to work on getting back into is the daily shower. This can be unbelievably challenging just after having a baby and while there is nothing wrong with showering at 11:45pm, you may have other ideas about your hair style for work than the “I sort of slept on this” look. Plus, showering is alone time. You may not feel the need now, but going forward, it becomes paramount.

Lastly, do you remember the crock-pot you got as an engagement present? It has pictures of apples and fake needlepoint on the outside? Throw in some frozen chicken breasts, a half cup of water and a packet of taco seasoning. Shred when you get home and serve with tortillas and all the fixings. Try homemade chili or vegetable soup. You can even cook meatloaf in there. There are endless possibilities found in all the usual books and websites. It may not go with stainless steel décor, but coming home after all that life hands us to the smell of dinner goes with anything.

A common toy is a plastic drum full of other plastic instruments. Typically, there is a recorder, a tambourine, maracas, a kazoo, some jingle bells and of course, drumsticks. These instruments sound fantastic if you possess a certain joie de vivre or the ability to bang two things together. If you have more than one child, you have an insta-band and it is tons of fun for everyone for this band to rove about the house. Besides your impending headache, you will notice that the children all play at once, with no subtlety or thought as to how the instruments sound, all together, all at once. It is every man for himself and that is standard fare for children. As dependent creatures, making your needs known without a thought for others is akin to survival. If you do not scream and cry about your hunger, your wet bum or your unwanted solitude, none of it will be resolved.

Babies cry an average of three hours a day. Aside from other signs like rooting, yelling is all they have in their arsenal of communication. Once your milk supply is established and the baby has been through her first two growth spurts, the crying usually lessens or at least seems more purposeful. You will notice different sounding cries early on. Somehow you will know which cry means feed me, change me or swaddle me so I can barely move and put me down with a knit hat on my head. Recognizing these sounds will enable you to meet some needs before they become desperate. A cry of desperation always sounds worse than any others and is that much harder to calm.

Letting babies “cry it out” early on will likely result in missed cues. Getting through those first six weeks with the understanding that it is a time of settling in and not an indication of what life will be like forever and ever, will help with coping. Once things settle down, figuring out which cry and fussy sounds can be left alone will be easier. Once you get the hang of which cries are the ones OK to respond to more slowly, you could end up with a sleeping baby as opposed to one choking on their own tears.

Like adults, all babies are different. Some will be more emphatic with their cries and some will be more complacent. Either way, give them a chance to teach you what they are saying before you stop listening. Knowing your baby and their earliest form of communication will help you to become a more confident parent and your baby will thank you.

The definition of selfish is: “concerned chiefly or only with oneself, without regard for the well-being of others.” Think about the last time you heard someone identified as selfish. Was the description accurate? Often times when we use this label we are actually talking about someone (usually a woman; the words we use to describe this same trait in men generally have a different flavor.) who is protective of their energy, time and sanity or they simply have a good handle on their capabilities.

Our limits are something that through the experiences of life we hopefully come to understand and learn to stay within. In doing this we protect ourselves from sure destruction. This phenomenon is called self-preservation. For many women this is difficult. There are many metaphors – if you only make withdrawals and not enough deposits, eventually the bank will be empty, learn to exercise your “no” muscle, a tree with enough chops at its trunk will someday fall, etc. etc.

When we try to please everyone one of two things will happen. You will either try to do it all, inevitably fail all the while punishing those you are trying to please for their lack of comprehension that you are there to make their lives more wonderful, or you will try to do it all, inevitably fail and end up in the fetal position in the back of your minivan amongst the groceries and the mulch. Both scenarios end with everyone neither helped nor pleased.

The metaphor about exercising your no muscle is a favorite. Like everyone else, we were probably quite adept at using this word when we were toddlers but along the way seemed to get the impression that we should instead be saying oh, of course, yes, absolutely, sure, I can be there, do that. Saying no is not about selfishness or being a charity miser. It is not about lack of manners or laziness. It is about guarding your soul. It is about knowing who you have time for. Since they are the one in the mirror and those most precious to you, that knowledge is golden.

When it is time to return to work outside the home, how you feel about that work will have an impact on how easy it is to go back to it. The six weeks most women take off after giving birth can fly by mighty fast. If you are going back to your job as opposed to getting back to your career, that time may seem to evaporate into thin air. Either way, those first crazy, wonderful days with your new baby will go fast but is it also a time to consider other changes?

When going through the life-changing process of becoming a parent, priorities often shift. All of a sudden, the previously thought of importance of a vast array of things seem meaningless, pointless, juvenile. An important part of maturity is learning to be good to yourself and your needs. Taking care of yourself and your needs ultimately enables you to take care better care of others – like your family. When it comes to your job, perhaps looking at it as a career would enable you to get more out of it. If there are possibilities for growth and you enjoy the people, orienting your goals towards making a career of that job could make the difference in how well you are able to juggle the work/life balance as a parent. If soul-searching about the current job you have and its potential leaves you cold, it is time to think about something different.

In a recent, nationally-done survey conducted by the magazine Working Mother in conjunction with Ernst & Young, IBM and Procter & Gamble, women who were invested in a career rated themselves happier across the board than mothers who worked just to pay the bills. In addition, they felt more respected and more confident. Feeling happier about things like your family, your marriage, and your choices will not go unnoticed by those very people you are so happy about.

We can all read books, talk to experts and try to do the right thing, but ultimately it will be leading the life that feels good to us that will enable us to be the best parents. Whatever choices you make, look hard at the reasons. Work towards a life that combines your needs along with those of your family and then reap the benefits of satisfaction.

I recently read Hanna Rosin’s April 2009 article from The Atlantic, “The Case Against Breastfeeding.” It is always interesting to read an alternative perspective. I found her insights interesting and her information factual. I was particularly struck by her idea that in pursuit of breastfeeding for all the right reasons, we lost sight of doing it for no reason at all.

The best way for the greatest possible chance of success with nursing is to see it as what will occur as opposed to Option #1 or Option #2. Since the vast majority of us in this country see ourselves as automatically having options, why not pretend to have none?

Perhaps if we nurse our babies for us or because there is no other option we would take pleasure in the simple act of doing it instead of adding it to the list of must-dos. Instead of doing it to ensure superior brain development, superior immune systems and superiority in general, we could do it because it is great; because there are the boobs, sitting there in all their glory, filled with milk for the baby. It is not going to make the baby smarter than his genetic potential. It will not provide him with an immune system greater than the one he is destined to develop. It will not prevent our children from acting like morons when they are teenagers.

It will give them the best beginning on the path to their potential. It will line their GI tracts with great stuff to ward off nasty stuff. It will be warm and ready and free at all times. It will feel wonderful. Without options, a mother would breastfeed because it costs no money as opposed to formula and bottles. Beyond that benefit she would experience the relaxing release of the mothering hormone and get the pure sense of power that providing can give. She would enjoy the quiet time with her baby.

Breastfeeding has gone in and out of style based on the current version of superiority. It should not be used as a status symbol. It is simply what we are designed to do. Enjoy it for what it is and let its lauded super powers be simply the possible icing on the baby cakes.