Hi Sezza, sorry to hear your little one with be staying in hospt. Mine was in for nearly four months. I expressed full time for him for 12 months as he was unable to suck feed and was tube fed.

The hospital will have good pumps available for you to use in the wards/NICU/SCBU. They will also have ones you can hire (ours was about $20 month) and take home. IF you are only going to be needing one for a few weeks/months I would recommend hiring a good Medela from the hospt. If you think you want buy one I would recommend waiting until you have had some experience of expressing and how it works best for you and then buy one.

There will be lactation consultants in the hospt that will be able to help you with working out a good one for you once your supply is in and you have the hang of it. Find out about this now and if there aren't any ones available get yourself a good LC now. I went to the hospt and had a session with their LC just on expressing before my bubs was born as we new he would have trouble.

Honestly there are so many different ones out there! I hired an electric Medela for about six months then bought a manual Avent Isis. I actually found that my boobs didnt like the electric after a while and other mums in hospt were recommending the Avent so I tried it and it worked much better for me. It didnt take any longer and the supply was better - I could control the suction and speed more and therefore got more milk out.

HTH.

Rachel