I tried medium to high pressure pumping years ago before giving up because it just did not work for me. I used to noogle about 2-3 hours per day. I never got anything more than a moderate amount of temporary swelling. It was a little less than 1 cup size increase on my best days, and it didn’t last very long. The higher pressure also gave me slight orange peel skin near my armpits and between my breast, and I think it caused a bony ridge to develop on my sternum. The ridge on my sternum is weird because I’ve never heard of anything like that happen to anyone else, and I wasn’t even pumping as hard as some other people do. I never once got a blister or a pressure sore and I only gave myself the dreaded “red dots” one time. My sternum naturally sticks out and, without padding, the cups really dig into the bottom of my sternum and cause bruising. For all those reasons, I gave up on noogling years ago and only decided to try again recently. Now I want to try something similar to The Brava system.
In studies, the Brava system provided about 1 cup size increase every 18 weeks if used for 11 hours per day. That would equal about 3 cup sizes per year. In real life, most people didn’t actually use the system for that long, because of the expense of periodically replacing the domes as the well as the skin irritation and the general annoyance of having to wear the domes for 8-12 hours per day.
I bought a brava pump (aka Smartbox) and I love how it’s able to maintain very low pressure for a long time without allowing the domes to fall off. When I tried to sleep pump with a regular hand pump they would always fall off right away in my sleep if I used low pressure, and if I used a higher pressure I’d wake up in the middle of the night in a lot of pain with major skin irritation.
I also bought brava domes and it’s mind blowing how comfortable they are. Unfortunately I bought wide large domes because domes are getting harder and harder to find and I got them for a great price I couldn’t pass up. They are way too big for me and won’t maintain a seal for very long, but I think I might be able to grow into them, so I don’t want to sell them and risk not being able to find another decently priced pair.
I’ve been doing 4 to 5 hours of low pressure pumping for only 3 days without any padding because the padding I own won’t maintain a seal at low pressure. I ordered camper tape, which is a type of closed cell foam tape with strong adhesive. It might turn out to be too thin to use for very long sessions, but I used it as padding years ago and it seemed like it would be able to hold a seal at low pressure much more easily than thick fluffy foam rings. I hope that’s true, because I can’t risk using the cups without padding for much longer. Once I have the tape, I plan to sleep pump for 8 to 10 hours per night.
Long story short, I’m a big fan of low pressure/long duration pumping (at least in theory). I hope more people on this forum try it out and work out the issues that stop most people from doing it long term. It seems like it could be a safe effective solution for a lot of people. I’ll probably create a program page once I get my padding problems figured out.