Ameda's Milk Storage Bags Are Terrible (With A Side of Suck!)

Every day this pisses me off, so I decided to come here and rant about it.

With Ian, I used Lansinoh milk storage bags for all the milk that I pumped, and I never had a problem. I heard other moms say that they leaked, but they never did for me.

A couple of months ago, I was running low on the Lansinoh bags, and I was at the Ameda website anyway, buying a new power cord for my pump. So I threw a couple of boxes of these Failbags into my shopping cart. At $13.99 a box, they ain't cheap, kids. But I thought, hey, my pump is Ameda, and this bitch has fought the good fight for three years, so they probably make good bags too.

Fail.

First of all, the opening of the bags are narrow. They "say" that it's so you can screw the bag onto the neck of the pump and pump directly into the bag; I've never in my life been able to do that. Are they smoking crack?

Secondly, they don't have a nice little neat and tidy zip closure like Lansinoh's bags (which, by the way, are CHEAPER). They make you use some stupid ass clip and then a twist tie - like we need to pollute the earth some more, now, sure, let's throw some more plastic crap in the landfills. I've already got a coworker who's squicked out by me pumping - the LAST thing that I want to do is stand there in the kitchenette with my milk apparatus on display as I fight with the damn bag. I gave up on the clip after the first time using it. I just try my best with the twist tie, and pray. Sadly, the milk gods don't listen, because frequently I get leaks. The best thing I can do is to freeze it, because then it won't leak. If I put it in the fridge, I'd best be putting it in a cup if I don't want milk all over my edibles.

Thirdly, the box contains 20 bags. They divvy out the bags into separate sealed plastic bags of 5 each. Because, again, with the landfill. And that's exactly how I want to spend my afternoons - ripping into a little baggie with my teeth as I stand there holding pump flanges and bottles and whatnot, trying to hustle so my coworker doesn't freak out. I'm pretty sure it's a sterilization issue - they figure that having 20 bags parceled out into 4 bags of 5 means that if one bag gets contaminated, the others will be ok. But dammit, they need to test this shit with new moms in the real world before they sell their failbags on the open market.

Just don't ask me to do it because I've just about had it.