Pumping Schedule Generator: Your Personal 24-Hour Pumping Plan

This pumping schedule generator builds a pumping plan around your real day. Choose your baby’s age and your goal (exclusive pumping, going back to work or building a freezer stash), enter when you wake up and, for work, when you leave your baby and when you’re back. You get a 24-hour list of suggested pump times, a simple timeline and the number of sessions per day.

The plan is a starting point. Shift any time by half an hour if it suits you better; what matters most is the number of sessions and keeping the gaps roughly even. For the reasoning behind each situation, ready-made sample plans and tips for 12-hour shifts, read our full guide to pumping schedules.

How the generator builds your schedule

Goal and baby’s age	Sessions per day	How the times are set
Exclusive pumping, 0–3 months	8	Every 3 hours from your wake-up time, around the clock (2 at night)
Exclusive pumping, 3–6 months	7	6 sessions spread evenly from wake-up to bedtime, plus 1 in the middle of the night
Exclusive pumping, 6 months and older	6	6 sessions spread evenly from wake-up to bedtime
Returning to work, under 3 months	At work: depends on hours away	Breastfeed before you leave, pump every 2½ hours while you’re away, breastfeed when you’re back
Returning to work, 3 months and older	At work: depends on hours away	Breastfeed before you leave, pump every 3 hours while you’re away, breastfeed when you’re back
Freezer stash while nursing	1	Breastfeed when you wake up, pump 30 minutes later; nurse on demand the rest of the day

For work, no pump is planned in the last hour before you’re back with your baby, because you’ll breastfeed soon after. If you wake up more than an hour before you leave, the plan adds a feed when you wake up. “Bedtime” means 16 hours after your wake-up time. All times are rounded to the nearest 15 minutes.

Sourced rules and our own choices

From the sources:

• Exclusive pumping, early weeks: La Leche League suggests 8 to 10 sessions a day at regular intervals, every 2 to 3 hours, with a session between 1 and 5 a.m. The Connecticut WIC program advises pumping both breasts every 2 to 3 hours and at least once overnight, for at least 15 minutes. Babies breastfeed about 8 to 12 times in 24 hours in the early weeks and months, according to the CDC.
• Exclusive pumping, once supply is steady: La Leche League says to consider cutting back to 5 to 7 sessions a day when your weekly totals show that your supply is well established.
• At work: La Leche League suggests pumping as many times as your baby would feed while you’re apart, nursing before you leave and when you’re back, and says pumping every 2 to 3 hours maintains supply. Cleveland Clinic calls pumping every 3 hours a simple starting point, every 2 hours if you pump less than your baby eats and every 4 hours if you make more than enough. Its example for a 12-hour day (feeds at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., pumps at 10 a.m., 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.) is exactly what the generator gives for those hours.
• Freezer stash: La Leche League suggests waiting until breastfeeding is established, usually around 4 weeks, then pumping after one feed a day while your breasts still feel a little full.
• Your rights at work: the PUMP Act fact sheet from the US Department of Labor covers break time and a private space that isn’t a bathroom for up to 1 year after birth.

Our choices (simplifications):

• Session counts by age: the 8, 7 and 6 sessions are ours. 8 is the low end of La Leche League’s 8 to 10 for the early weeks, and 7 and 6 sit inside its 5 to 7 range for later. The sources don’t tie these numbers to a baby’s age; when to cut back depends on your supply, not the calendar.
• Where the sessions go: spacing sessions evenly, a 16-hour waking day, the single night session at 3–6 months and no night session from 6 months are our own choices.
• Every 2½ hours at work for babies under 3 months: our midpoint of La Leche League’s 2 to 3 hours, because younger babies feed more often.
• No pump in the last hour before you’re back, the 30 minutes between the stash feed and the pump, and the 15-minute rounding are ours too.

Worked examples

• Exclusive pumping, 1–3 months, waking at 6:00 a.m.: 8 sessions at 6:00 a.m., 9:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m., 3:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m., 12:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m.
• Exclusive pumping, 3–6 months, waking at 6:00 a.m.: 7 sessions at 6:00 a.m., 9:15 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 3:30 p.m., 6:45 p.m., 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. The longest gap is 4 hours.
• Back at work, 3–6 months, wake at 6:00 a.m., away 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.: breastfeed at 6:00 and 8:00 a.m., pump at 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. (2 sessions), breastfeed at 5:00 p.m.
• Back at work, 1–3 months, wake at 6:30 a.m., away 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.: breastfeed at 6:30 and 8:00 a.m., pump at 10:30 a.m., 1:00 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. (3 sessions), breastfeed at 5:00 p.m.
• Night shift, 3–6 months, away 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.: breastfeed at 7:00 p.m., pump at 10:00 p.m., 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m., breastfeed at 7:00 a.m.
• Freezer stash, waking at 6:00 a.m.: breastfeed at 6:00 a.m., pump at 6:30 a.m.

Tips for sticking to your schedule

• Put it in your calendar. Under your schedule, “Add to my calendar” downloads a calendar file with a repeating reminder for each time (every day, or Monday to Friday for a work plan). It works with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar and Outlook, and it’s made in your browser, so nothing is sent to us. “Print schedule” prints just the plan, for the fridge or your pump bag.
• Count sessions, not minutes. Moving a session by 30 minutes is fine. Regular sessions are what keep your supply up, so a short session beats a skipped one.
• Watch your daily total. If you exclusively pump and cut back a session, wait several days and check that your total holds before changing anything else.
• Keep your gear ready. A spare set of valves and membranes helps on busy days; our pump part replacement schedule shows when to change them.
• Check your milk’s use-by time. After a long day away, our breast milk storage calculator tells you how long your pumped milk keeps.

More on the topics behind each plan: exclusive pumping, pumping at work and how long to pump per session.

When to get help

This generator gives general suggestions for healthy, full-term babies. If your baby was born early, is in the NICU or isn’t gaining weight well, follow the plan from your baby’s care team. Talk to an IBCLC lactation consultant or your provider if your output drops for several days in a row, pumping hurts, or you’re going back to work in the first weeks after birth. Call your doctor if you have a fever or a red, hot, painful area on your breast. Find local help in our breastfeeding support directory.