Using Medela Parts with Spectra Pumps

My son was born at the Ascension Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital in Milwaukee. I still remember the views of Lake Michigan from our hospital room. Here at this hospital they use the Medela Symphony pump, so for my wife it was the first pump that she tried. I can tell you that this particular pump was really easy to operate, and that my wife really liked the way the pump parts felt.

We were also lucky enough that her sister owned the same pump and was kind enough to lend it to my wife for a while, so right after we left the hospital to finally come home, my wife kept using the same pump. After getting used to using the Medela parts, it was hard for her to move to the Spectra parts when she switched to the Spectra S2 pump. I guess it’s important to mention that before Vincent was born, we bought the Spectra S2 and Spectra S9, so that’s why we needed to switch to the Spectra pump eventually.

After a couple of months it was time to give back the Medela Symphony pump to my sister-in-law, so Julie asked me to look for an adapter to be able to connect the Medela Parts to the Spectra pump. Looks like the most common adapter is this one:

But there are a couple of things I didn’t like about this adapter, firstly you have two connection points, so you can definetly lose pump power because of this, and secondly, it’s so small it could easily get lost.

That’s why after looking for while, I found a better option:

All they did is make the connector to be about 1 inch longer, a super simple and efficient solution.

Now my wife is using the Spectra Pump with the Medela Parts and she is very happy with the adapter I selected, even her lactation consultant was asking me for the link to buy this adapter so she could share it with other breastfeeding moms.

Do you also prefer Medela flanges instead of the Spectra ones? Are there other adapter you would like to recommend to us?