Exclusive pumping
Also called EP, exclusively pumping, exclusive pumper, exclusive expressing, exclusively expressing
Exclusive pumping means feeding a baby only breast milk that has been pumped and given by bottle, with no feeds straight from the breast. People shorten it to EP, and researchers also call it exclusive expressing.
How it's said
Any other exclusive pumpers?
In some ways, exclusive pumping has been amazingly freeing, but I'm not producing as much milk unless I'm permanently "plugged in"!
Mine are older now but I exclusively pumped for 13 months for my oldest.
Who says it
In the UK, where the NHS calls it expressing rather than pumping, parents also say exclusively expressing.
Not to be confused with
- Combination feeding mixes breast milk and formula. Exclusive pumping is breast milk only, all of it pumped and none taken straight from the breast.
Where it came from
Stephanie Casemore, a Canadian mother, wrote the book Exclusively Pumping Breast Milk after pumping for her son for a year, because she found very little written about it. Its second edition came out in 2014.
Researchers came to it later: a 2024 review of 27 studies used exclusive expressing (EE) and exclusive pumping (EP) for a baby who is never fed at the breast and gets all human milk by bottle. It noted that researchers had only recently begun telling the type of milk apart from the way it's fed.