What is Power Pumping?

If you are looking for an easy way to boost your supply, power pumping might be your answer. The main idea of power pumping is that you mimic cluster feeding. A baby naturally cluster feeds while going through a growth spurt to signal your body to make more milk. You can trick your body into thinking your baby is in a growth spurt to boost your milk supply.
There are a few variations to it, but I find that this is what works for me. Feel free to change it to meet your needs. Every woman's body is different and will respond better to different time increments.

Pump for 20 min
Rest for 10 min
Pump for 10 min
Rest for 10 min
Pump for 10 min

This seems to work the best in the early morning or in the middle of the night when prolactin levels are the highest. If you need a significant boost in supply, I would recommend power pumping 3-5 times/day for at least 3 days or until supply increases to the desired amount.


Power pumping can also be used once per day to help better maintain supply if that has been an issue for you in the past.

Keep pumping until the time is up even if the milk stops flowing. That is the point of power pumping. You are signaling your body that what it is currently making is not enough and it needs to make more. If milk is flowing the whole time you may want to look into how to better drain your breasts. I will have a post discussing that soon.

Have you tried power pumping? What worked for you? Let us know in the comments below.