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Note: As I haven’t tried other pumps, this review will purely be a review on the PIS and not a comparison between pumps.

I bought the Medela PIS from The First Few Years in Singapore (@ Paragon) after doing some research online about breastpumps. It was a toss-up between Medela and Avent, however, I did not choose Avent as their bottles are not BPA-free (at that point in time). The Medela PIS has also garnered quite a lot of good reviews, plus it’s a dual and electric pump, both of which were criteria that I wanted in a pump.

Photo from The First Few Years

What I like:
1. There are not many parts to clean/sterilize, only four in total: the breast shield and funnel, the valve and the membrane.
2. It’s easy to put together, easy to use. Just attach the four parts above to the tubing, attach the tubing to the motor, turn the knob and pump away!
3. It uses Medela’s 2-phase expression system, which means for the first two minutes, the pump stimulates your baby’s initial suckling motion, ie. fast pumps, then once let down occurs, you can switch to the longer and more powerful pumps. I go back and forth between the two as I found I’m able to squeeze a little bit more milk when I do that.
4. The power of the suction can be adjusted. Most women do not have equal sized breasts, yours truly included, hence I need to tweak the suction slightly when I switch breasts.
5. It’s pretty quiet (at least it doesn’t disturb Elena when I pump while she sleeps).
6. If I remember correctly, you can use all standard sized bottles with this pump, so it’s not necessary to buy just Medela bottles. Medela also produces breastmilk storage bags that can be attached directly to the pump (it’s not cheap tho!).

What I dislike:
1. It’s not hands free if you’re dual-pumping, hence it’s very hard to adjust the suction if you’re halfway pumping. In the end, I usually resort to expressing one side followed by the other (which also leaves one hand free to surf the ‘net…but also defeats the purpose of buying a dual-pump… !).
2. The motor unit is not exactly very light.
3. And that’s all!

The set that I bought includes two extra membranes, and cooler bag and ice pack, four bottles and one teat, a battery pack (which I’ve never used coz it needs 8-10 batteries!)…and all of it fits into a nice black shoulder bag (see picture above) which I’ve also used as a diaper bag.

For the price I paid - the cheapest I could find in Singapore - I think it was definitely worth purchasing considering I get more use out of it than my handphone these days (yes, it costs about the same as a decent handphone)!