Feeding

Pump and dump

Also called pump-and-dump, pumping and dumping, pumped and dumped, #pumpanddump

Pump and dump means expressing breast milk and pouring it away instead of giving it to the baby. Parents use it most about alcohol, and often with a joke.

How it's said

  • ...just curious as to when you should pump and dump?
  • I was used to expressing by the time I needed to pump and dump so that wasn't an issue...
  • More like Cowchella, lol. Jamiroquai was soooo worth the pump and dump.

Who says it

  • Parents
  • Parents on forums
  • Lactation consultants

Where it came from

The phrase is older in finance, where a pump and dump is a fraud that hypes a stock and then sells it. Wiktionary quotes a 2000 New York Times report in which the SEC called it a classic market manipulation.

Wiktionary records a second, baby sense: expressing milk and throwing it away, typically after an infection or alcohol. In 2018 the model Behati Prinsloo captioned a pumping photo from the Coachella festival #pumpanddump, and People covered the backlash.