Breast pumps are well-known devices for extracting milk from a human breast. A breast pump may be used if the baby is not itself able to extract the milk, or if the mother is separated from the baby, for example, if away from the baby at work. The use of a breast pump to extract milk may also be used to stimulate lactation in women with a low milk supply.
Conventional breast pumps make use of vacuum to induce milk extraction from a nursing mother's breast. The pumping action of the device draws the milk from the teat to a collection vessel, and may be adjusted to the preferences of the lactating female.
Breast pumps may be manually operated, for example, by squeezing a handle or operation of a foot paddle. Breast pumps may also be electrically driven by a small electric motor. The present invention relates to a breast pump with an electrically driven vacuum pump.
In addition to the electrically driven vacuum pump such breast pumps usually comprise a breast receiving funnel for receiving the breast of the female. This breast receiving funnel is part of an expression kit that usually also comprises the collection vessel for collecting the extracted milk. The breast receiving funnel comprising a mouth and a throat. The mouth is open at an upper end and an inner surface of the mouth converges from the upper end towards the throat to form a hollow recess for receiving the female breast.
Many mothers have problems to correctly attach the breast receiving funnel of the expression kit correctly to their beast. During placement the mother has to correctly place the expression kit while at the same time having to turn on the vacuum pump with the other hand. This is sometimes a tedious action especially for unexperienced mothers. The nipple should be aligned as good as possible in the center of the breast receiving funnel. If the mother then turns on the vacuum pump, e.g. by pushing a button, the breast receiving funnel often gets out of place.
The above-mentioned problem becomes even more apparent if two expression kits are used at the same time, one for each breast. In this case it is even more difficult to correctly place the expression kits and operate the breast pump settings at the same time due to the fact that the mother does not have both hands available when using two expression kits and having to hold both of them. The first expression kit can obviously be placed with both hands. Nevertheless, the second expression kit is more difficult to be placed, since the mother has then only one hand available. After placing both expression kits to her breast, the mother will need to adjust the settings or switch on the vacuum pump. This action requires a quite un-ergonomical posture of the mother, since she has to hold both expression kits with one hand while turning on the vacuum pump with the other hand.
A known solution for such a twin breast pump is the usage of a special bra into which the expression kits are integrated. This has the advantage that the mother can use both hands for initiating the milk expression and also after starting the milk expression. This solution, however, has the disadvantage of being quite cost intensive (additional costs for the special bra). Furthermore, the mother has to at least partly undress herself to put the bra on. This is not very convenient for the mother.
WO 2008/127991 A1 discloses a manual or motorized breastpump that includes a mechanism to regulate pressure change within a breastshield chamber, including in some cases to a maintained minimum pressure that is less than ambient (atmosphere). The pressure regulator provides control for varying negative pressure between a minimum value and a maximum value (and values in between), or to achieve a specific actually measured negative pressure value within a breastshield.
US 2008/0177224 A1 discloses a programmable electric breast pump system including a vacuum pump pneumatically coupled to breast cups and a vacuum relief valve bypassing the vacuum pump. A controller receives command input from a vacuum level selector and a vacuum rate selector, and feedback from a pressure sensor measuring vacuum in the breast cups. In response, the controller cycles the relief valve between minimum and maximum vacuum setpoints to create a periodic vacuum pulse in the breast cups. By adjusting the vacuum min/max levels and vacuum rate, a user may change the strength of the pulse after let-down, or synchronize the frequency of the pulse with the natural refractory time of a lactating breast.