If you have spent any amount of time expressing breast milk with an electric pump, first of all: hug me, for we are sisters. (I'll hug you gently, as I don't want to hurt you if you're engorged.) Secondly, I feel you, because pumping is the worst. No doubt you could gather in a group of other parents who have done the same and go on about the annoyances and peculiarities of pumping all day long. (You probably wouldn't want to, but you could.) One weird thing many moms have told me? Things their breast pump "said" to them.
Any parent will tell you that the cruelest thing you can do to a mom, dad, or caretaker is give a child a noisy toy. I once actually cried saying "Who the hell gives a 4-year-old a harmonica?!" as my son ran around my living room blowing into the damn thing as hard as he could. It had been a hard day. While listening to a pre-schooler beat a drum or artlessly strum a guitar is annoying, you can at least comfort yourself by thinking "Well, exposure to instruments is good and may help nurture an early love of music." The really horrible ones are the electronic toys that make the same loud, tinny noises over and over again, but here's the catch: it's not just toys.
Baby items, even items meant to soothe a child to sleep, can wind up making repetitive noises that, after enough time and exposure, begin to sound like human language. My kids had a swing with a noise machine on it that sounded like it was saying, "Tell Minnie Driver!" over and over and over. (Tell her what, baby swing?! What do I need to tell Minnie Driver?! Is she in danger?!) In my conversations with other parents, breast pumps are far and away the most notorious culprits of this phenomenon. I asked other moms what their breast pump "said" to them and got some, well, interesting answers...