The talking breastpump

In my third week of motherhood, I came down with a pretty bad case of mastitis, a breast infection. I was sick as a dog – high fever, exhaustion, achy body, the works. It was like the flu. One of the treatments for mastitis is frequent breastfeeding – every 2 hours around the clock. Ugh. Anyway, little miss Rosie didn’t want to eat that often, so I bought an electric breastpump.

I’m going to make my point soon, I promise.

An electric breastpump is equipped with a motor that sucks air in a rhythmic way to pump milk out of the breasts.

The pump began speaking to me right away. No, seriously, it talks. It would say something different every time. Now, when I was very sick and would pump late at night, I sort of thought it was just the fever talking. What did it say?

“Here we go, here we go, here we go…”
“Do it now, do it now, do it now…”
“Let it go, let it go, let it go…“
“dog fooood, dog fooood, dog fooood”
“right now, right now, right now…”
“holy cow, holy cow, holy cow…”

But after I got better, it kept talking! It still speaks to me today. Sometimes I hear the phrases above, and sometimes I hear new ones. I never told anyone about this. I thought for sure I was going insane. However, I found out recently on one of my breastfeeding internet boards that lots of breastpumps to talk to lots of moms. Subliminal messages from the manufacturers? Messages from aliens? If either is true, they need to work on their delivery. Honestly, “dog food?” What are they trying to get out of me?

Don’t worry, I haven’t started talking back to it…. yet.