Everyone knows that breast milk provides incredible nutritional value for babies. It can protect against allergies, contains antibodies to help fight disease, is easier to digest, and has growth hormones to aid a baby’s development. It can even be life-saving for those born prematurely or with illnesses; the risk of premature or ill babies developing intestinal infections is 10 times higher if they are fed formula instead of breast milk.
But breastfeeding and pumping are extremely time-consuming for mothers to keep up with. A newborn nurses about 8-12 times per day for the first month and after a month or two, they nurse 7-9 times per day. With traditional breast pumps, breastfeeding moms end up spending a lot of time in their pumping chairs.
Enter Simple Wishes, a brand created by four sisters who wanted to make products they felt, especially as new mothers, were missing from the market. One of these was the Simple Wishes Signature Hands Free Pumping Bra. This innovative bra, frees mom’s hands while she pumps. It is also adjustable in size, so it can be used throughout a nursing mother’s size changes. Because it is so easy to use and provides great coverage, it can be used almost anywhere. It can even be used when travelling in a car or on a plane, so mothers can feel free to leave the house while still maintaining their pumping schedule.
It may sound simple, but providing moms with the ability to multitask while pumping can have an incredible impact–as it did for mom Stephanie Leveret. Once she began using the hands-free bra, Leveret says she felt unstoppable. “I was no longer confined to the walls of my home and started to regain my sense of self,” she says. “It started out small at first; I was able to reply to emails and pay bills while pumping. Next, I would attach an extension cord to my pump, and I would be able to do various chores around the house such as vacuuming, folding laundry, washing pump parts and bottles, and doing meal preps.” These tasks may seem small and are easy to take for granted, but the ability to multitask while pumping helped give Leveret her sense of independence back.“I went from being a new, tired, pumping mom who lost a sense of herself that was confined to the house to a mom that felt like herself again, and there wasn’t anything that I couldn’t do,” she adds.
And not only did Leveret regain her sense of freedom, but she was also able to pump enough milk to donate 10,882 fl. oz. of life-saving breast milk to medically fragile infants through the nonprofit King’s Daughters Milk Bank in Norfolk, Virginia. “That was enough breast milk to give 43,528 treatments, or enough to feed 5,441 medically fragile infants for a day,” she says. Leveret now volunteers with the nonprofit. “Without the Simple Wishes Hands Free Bra I never would have been as happy as I was while pumping and I never would have been able to touch so many precious, fragile lives.”
To learn more about Leveret’s story and Simple Wishes, visit simplewishes.com!
