How to Get a No-Cost Breast Pump

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I hate life’s minutiae — paying bills, scheduling appointments, sorting mail, going to the post office … and dealing with insurance, which has always been at the top of my Things I’d Rather Do Later List. That is why when I was pregnant with my second child and heard that I could get a free breast pump through Tricare, I almost didn’t follow up. Somehow digging through the garage for the dusty breast pump I used with my first child (which had already been used by two other friends before me), sounded easier than figuring out how to get that alleged free breast pump.

Boy was I wrong.

A friend who was pregnant at the same time as me told me about her experience with The Breastfeeding Shop. She said, “Once you get a prescription from your OB, I promise, it’s really easy. You fill out a form online and it takes two minutes.”

No calling? Just an online form? A prescription from the doctor who I already see every week?

I decided to give it a try. I was already 38 weeks pregnant (yes, I had put it off that long!), and I figured if it seemed like too big of a hassle or for some reason I never received the pump in the mail, at least I could use my old pump.

Not only was my friend right — the form really did take two minutes to fill out — I also got to choose from a wide array of pumps. I had wrongly assumed that something free had to be low quality. There was the Medela Pump in Style, the same model I used with my first child, so I knew I liked it. There also was other brands I had heard great things about: Spectra S1 and S2, Ardo Calypso, Ameda, Evenflo and more. And if too many options sounds confusing, on The Breastfeeding Shop’s website, there is a really helpful comparison chart, which lines up all the breasts pumps and informs you about each one’s weight, what it comes with, its pumping capabilities, etc.

As for the prescription part, I asked my doctor for a physical prescription and uploaded it to the site, but your doctor can fax it in for you, or The Breastfeeding Shop can request it for you (which just takes a little more time).

Even with all this initial ease, I still wasn’t ready to accept that any process that involved receiving something for free could be this easy. Surely, the pump would show up when my child turned 6 months old, right?

Wrong. My breast pump of choice arrived within days, plus in the box were all this other unexpected accessories like extra bottles, storage bags and extra tubing.

Best part? The pump worked so well. This may sound obvious but a new breast pump works a lot better than a used one.

Yes this is a sponsored post, but the reason The Breastfeeding Shop was one of the first companies Military Moms Blog reached out to is because of what a wonderful experience I had with the company, and I wanted other military moms to know.

Military Moms Blog is excited to partner with The Breastfeeding Shop, a Tricare preferred provider of breast pumps. This is a sponsored post.