Please read this first. This is a temporary working page. It exists so that the Durham County Department of Public Health, which is making these purchases on Breastfeed Durham’s behalf, and the volunteer lactation providers of the Breastfeed Durham Lactation Collaborative can see the same information in one place. It is written for professionals in the infant feeding space. It is not written for parents and it is not a product recommendation.
WHO Code statement. Breastfeed Durham and Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities follow the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and the subsequent World Health Assembly resolutions. We accept no funding, samples, or sponsorship from manufacturers or distributors of breast-milk substitutes, feeding bottles, or teats. The brands and retail listings on this page appear only because a county purchase order has to name a specific product from an approved vendor. Naming them here is not an endorsement, an advertisement, or a suggestion that any family should buy them. Families who need equipment or support should contact the free Lactation Collaborative clinic, where a lactation professional will fit and provide what is right for them.
This page will be taken down when the order is complete.
Twenty-nine more pumps for Durham families
In August 2026 the Partnership for a Healthy Durham’s Physical Activity, Nutrition, and Food Access (PANFA) committee funded Breastfeed Durham’s application in full: $5,000 for breast pumps and lactation supplies, all of it for Durham County families served through the Breastfeed Durham Lactation Collaborative, our free lactation clinic. We are grateful to the committee and to the Durham County Department of Public Health, which is placing the orders.
Durham County already funds 25 breast pumps a year for this program. Every pump beyond that we have to find money for ourselves, one source at a time; we have placed 147 pumps since September 2023 that way. This grant adds 29 pumps in a single season, more than doubling what the county can fund in a year, and it does something the annual pumps cannot: it lets our providers choose the equipment and the small parts, flanges, adapters, and inserts, that they actually run out of.
What the grant application promised
The application framed human milk as food access for Durham’s youngest residents, and pumps as the equipment that keeps that food supply going when a parent returns to work. Two passages from it:
“Human milk is the first food. For an infant under six months, it is not part of the diet, it is the entire diet. … It breaks down at return to work. A Durham parent goes back to a job at eight or ten weeks. Without a breast pump, milk production ends within weeks and the household absorbs a new food cost of well over $1,500 a year, or the infant’s nutrition is compromised. This is not a preference problem; it is an equipment problem.”
“Every pump is issued to one family and stays with that family permanently. Pumps are not shared, reassigned, or returned. … Each family also receives a replacement parts kit; duckbill valves and backflow protectors degrade within six to twelve weeks and are the leading cause of a pump being abandoned as ‘broken.’ Funding the hardware without the consumables is how pump distribution programs quietly fail at week eight.”
The commitments. By November 8, 2026, place single-user breast pumps and supplies with Durham County families through the Lactation Collaborative, and equip two Durham County community lactation spaces. All funds spent within Durham County; residency verified at distribution. By June 2027, report the share of recipient families who met their own stated infant feeding goal, with a target of 90 percent.
The application budgeted a mix of Medela and Spectra pumps, manual pumps, parts kits, milk storage bags, and two mini fridges. What follows is how that mix changed once we asked the people who hand these to families, and why.
What our providers asked for
We polled every provider in the Lactation Collaborative in September. Their answers reshaped the order:
- Spectra over Medela. The county’s annual pumps are already Medela, so this grant is a rare chance to stock Spectra. Both providers who responded asked for Spectra, and Medela is not a Durham County vendor in any case.
- Small flanges and the adapters to use them. Standard pump kits ship with 24 and 28 mm flanges. Many of the families we see need 13 to 19 mm. Providers asked for pano and saucer style flanges across that range, plus wide-mouth connectors so those flanges fit a Spectra, plus silicone insert sizing kits for fitting.
- Hydrogel pads, nipple shields, everters, lanolin, coconut oil, and a small stock of narrow bottles and preemie-flow nipples for the clinic’s feeding-support work.
- No milk storage bags. The clinic has plenty, and the Diaper Bank of North Carolina has more (below).
What the Diaper Bank of North Carolina is giving us
While we were building this order, the Diaper Bank of North Carolina, our long-standing partner, offered postpartum and breastfeeding supplies from its warehouse at no cost. Their photos showed sterile Medela Starter Supplemental Nursing Systems, Motif milk storage bags, Frida Mom perineal foam and instant ice pads, Lansinoh postpartum spray, Dermoplast, a Willow Go container and flange set, and a Haakaa silicone pump. Because of that, the supplemental nursing systems on our providers’ list come from the Diaper Bank instead of the grant, and every dollar that would have bought them went into pumps and flanges instead.
Photos from the Diaper Bank of North Carolina warehouse, September 2026.
What we are buying, and where
Everything comes from Amazon Business or Walmart, both approved county vendors. We priced every line at both and took the lower one. Total: $4,999.64 before tax, of a $5,000 grant. The county is tax exempt. The full line-by-line sheet, with links to every listing and the price comparison, is in the files at the bottom of this page.
| Cart | Store | What is in it | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| W1 | Walmart | 7 Spectra S2 Plus double electric pumps | $949.76 |
| W2 | Walmart | 7 Spectra S2 Plus (same cart, ordered again) | $949.76 |
| W3 | Walmart | 7 Spectra S2 Plus (same cart, ordered again) | $949.76 |
| W4 | Walmart | 6 Spectra S2 Plus + 8 packs Medela hydrogel pads | $885.12 |
| W5 | Walmart | 2 Spectra S2 Plus | $271.36 |
| A1 | Amazon Business | Everything else: flanges, connectors, inserts, shields, everters, lanolin, coconut oil, honey sticks, nursing pads, bottles, nipples, and the lactation space items (2 sets of chairs, 4 photo canvases, 2 nursing pillows) | $993.88 |
Why 29 pumps and not the 27 in the application: the Spectra S2 Plus is $177.99 from the manufacturer and from Amazon, and $135.68 from a medical supply seller on Walmart. Taking the lower price bought seven more pumps than we planned.
Ordering instructions for the Durham County Department of Public Health
Six orders in total, each under $1,000. All deliveries go to the Breastfeed Durham delivery address the county already has on file.
- Amazon cart A1. Open the shared Amazon Business list: https://a.co/07SrWR2y. Every item has its quantity set. Add all to cart. One item, the BuildASign custom canvas, will say “Select options to purchase”: choose 16 x 20 inches and upload the photo shown just below these steps (click it to open full size and save it), quantity 4. These are for the two lactation spaces.
- Walmart carts W1, W2, W3. Add the Spectra S2 Plus from this listing, quantity 7: https://www.walmart.com/ip/2BREH5JWPQN5 (sold by Simply Medical; the listing caps at 12 per order). Check out. Repeat two more times. Screenshot of this cart is in the files below.
- Walmart cart W4. Same pump, quantity 6, plus Medela hydrogel pads, quantity 8: https://www.walmart.com/ip/1LMHO6YNEJIO. Screenshot in the files below.
- Walmart cart W5. Same pump, quantity 2. Screenshot in the files below.
- If the Walmart seller runs short on pumps, the fallback is the same Spectra S2 Plus on Amazon at $177.99, sold by Pattern, Spectra’s authorized reseller: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BLBLR1I. Fewer pumps would fit the budget at that price; we would rather have fewer Spectras than switch brands.
- Deadline for orders to reach the county: November 8, 2026. We are aiming to have everything to you well before that.
The Walmart carts as built. Click any screenshot to open it full size.
For the Lactation Collaborative: what changed from your request sheet
- Pumps: 29 Spectra S2 Plus (corded). No S1s; the battery model costs about $100 more each.
- LacTeck and Pumpin’ Pal flanges are sold only by those companies directly, and the county can only buy from approved vendors. In their place: Maymom MyFit saucer flanges (13, 14, 15 mm), Maymom pano flanges (14 through 19 mm), seven 2-packs of wide-mouth Spectra connectors, and two silicone insert sizing kits (13 to 21 mm).
- Supplemental nursing systems come from the Diaper Bank, not the grant.
- Honey: one 250 g jar of Manukora MGO 850+ and one box of 24 single-serve Manuka Emporium MGO 263+ sticks. If a medical-grade wound product is what is needed for a specific family, say so and we will source it separately.
- Bottles: one Dr. Brown’s narrow 4 oz 4-pack, one Lansinoh 5 oz 3-pack, and two 6-packs of Dr. Brown’s narrow preemie-flow nipples. The storage unit already holds bottles.
- Lanolin is four 1.41 oz tubes rather than single-use packets, which are direct-only. Coconut oil is two 10-packet boxes.
- Nipple shields: three 2-packs of 16 mm and four 2-packs of 20 mm. Everters: five. Hydrogel: eight 4-packs. Nursing pads: one 100-count box.
- Lactation spaces: two sets of four white shell chairs, four 16 x 20 photo canvases, and two nursing pillows, for the two Durham employer or community sites flagged for lactation space support through our Business Award applications this fall.
Files
- PANFA_2026_Order_Sheet.xlsx: every line, both prices, links to each listing, cart assignment, and the decisions log (Excel).
- Walmart cart screenshots: W1 to W3, W4, W5.
- Photo for the four custom canvases (JPG, 16 x 20, 3200 x 4000 pixels, 1.5 MB).
- Diaper Bank of North Carolina inventory photos: Medela Starter SNS, perineal foam, postpartum spray, Dermoplast, used Spectra S2 Plus, ice maxi pads, milk storage bags, Willow Go containers, Willow Go flange and Haakaa.
- Amazon Business shared list, cart A1.
- Walmart listings: Spectra S2 Plus, Medela hydrogel pads.
Questions about this order should go to Breastfeed Durham through the contact form on this site. Families looking for a pump or feeding support: please book a visit with the Lactation Collaborative clinic; equipment is provided through a visit with a lactation professional, never on request from a web page.