Hello Dear Boobjuicers and Friends!
So I am recently inspired by a new mama, the wife of a colleague (who is such the cute proud papa with their 7-week-old snugglebean in his arms but I will not say that at work because we are all Polite Professionals who do not call each other adorable, or dear, which of course I never do at work. Nope. Doesn't happen.) She is starting to pump in anticipation of going back to her breadwinning gig part time. I meant, when I was pumping four times a day at my breadwinning job, to outline a day's schedule for you, Dear Boobjuicers, to illustrate one of my major themes in this blog:
You are not alone in finding this to be a major pain in the ass. It is still worth it. You will get used to it and better at it, and it's not forever. It is worth it. You will be majorly proud of yourself. You can do it. It is worth it.
So here it is. As I recall from my previous gig, and from the first two months at this gig, it went a little something like this:
Get to work by 8 if at all possible. (On Mondays, dial in to the weekly meeting and mute it so they don't hear me chewing/pumping/swearing at whatever I just dropped on my toe.) Put equipment in place. Do some work.
9:00 or 9:30 - pump round one. I liked to leave this until the later time if I could get away with it, because I found I got more milk if I did, and also it was nice to feel like I'd been working for more than ten minutes. But remember you don't want to have nursings/pumpings be more than three hours apart, and you want 8 or more rounds with kiddo or pump a day if at all feasible. Look at a real authority here, like The Nursing Mother's Companion, or a lactation consultant, not me, but to avoid losing ground on supply there is a minimum number of times per day you want the girls to get drained by the pump (Bessie) or Kiddo. So, pumping routine, which for me included a little bit of work on the computer while Bessie did her thing. If you have to pump away from your work station, is there something you could be reading that relates to work? It made me less anxious to think I was getting some breadwinning work done while the girls were doing their thing.
(Read the one pumping session blog entry here, imagine that has passed.)
The whole pumping routine took about 40 minutes, from getting up to wash my hands to sitting down to work again afterwards, including storing my catch and washing the pump parts. With Mama CC's brilliant tip about having enough pump parts to go through the day without washing in between, you could cut 3-5 minutes off that.
So then I'd pump again at 11:00 or 11:30, 2ish, and 4ish. I almost never ate lunch away from my desk, and I would often work until 6. This is not necessarily the best way to do things, but with my awesome commute (10 minute walk) I could get away with it and that made for something approximating eight hours of actual work in the day.
I have a lot of meetings and calls to do in the course of my job, and I had to be careful to schedule those to allow for pumping. There were definitely some anxious moments of realizing I had booked things poorly, but my new boss was extremely understanding about the whole thing, and basically just treated me like a grown-up who knew better than him where I needed to be. It's awesome to have a boss like that. We do not all have bosses like that. I have some thoughts on that point, but the biggest suggestion, and possibly the hardest but I have done it too (remember this is my *new* boss) is to phrase your conversations about the time and resources you need in terms of, "here is how I am going to continue to do the awesome work to which you have become accustomed." And most bosses are not the person to whom you should vent, unless they are lactivist mamas of kids who have all weaned already. Which, statistically speaking, your boss probably is not. Know that the law is on your side, but avoid referring to law unless you have to, I would say. Of course you know your situation and your boss and I do not. But bosses get nervous when you start quoting labor law, and conversations are harder when people are nervous.
There were days I felt like I got no work done. There were days I could not bring myself to pump a fourth time. There were two days back in California, and I do NOT recommend this, that I pumped on the drive home instead. I don't think this was terribly safe, and I wound up deciding it only got me home 15 minutes sooner, because I still had the same setup and take down, and it was harder to do well in the car. But my point is this: you will have imperfect days. You might get frustrated or feel overwhelmed. Me too! And I made it. And Kiddo only got formula once (and puked it all back up but that is another story). Which is not to say that if your Kiddo ever gets formula you have failed. Nonsense.
My point is this: I did it, therefore you can too. I'm just a mama like you, perhaps a bit more stubborn than some. I'm not a big supply boobjuicer, bottom end of adequate I would say. You can do this. It will be worth it. You can whine to me all you like about how hard it is, and I will acknowledge that yes, it is hard. It is worth it. You can do it.
One last note: there are lactivists who feel that pumping is a sorry thing to which we resort because our maternity leave practices in this country are crap. Well, if I lived in Denmark, which might be nifty, I would still have a breastpump. I'm not someone who would be happy staying home all day with my Kiddo. Not just mildly bored, I mean, out and out depressed. I'm not built for it. I come from a long line of women who need to work to be happy people. And unhappy people are not as good at being mamas as they are when they are happy. And I am not going to apologize to La Leche League or anyone else for wanting a breadwinning job. Kiddo got through it just fine, our boobjuicing partnership has been awesome, and I am among Medela's biggest fans. (Except their bras are small.) So if you get this sort of noise from your lactation consultant or someone else to whom you turned for help, take a deep breath, feel free to hide behind economic necessity (I did!) but do NOT feel guilty for wanting or needing to work. Even stay at home mamas might like to go out for an hour and a half without panicking that their kid is starving and Dad/co-Mama/babysitter is losing their cool. I'm good with that too.
There are more thoughts than perhaps you wanted on this topic. I hope you are all well and have a fabulous Hallowe'en. (Go as a cow, that would be funny. Or a big bottle of milk. Or a huge boob. Or a really tired woman with a kid hanging off her boob.)
Much love,
Suzi
Love this post, Suzi. Happy Halloween to you and your family. Thank goodness there are new laws in place. Of course, now I am a SAHM with a tiny part-time job but still. I hope women who want to breastfeed get the info about these because part of the reason I decided to stay home was because of some scrutiny I felt being a working mama back in 2007.
ReplyDeleteLove the post. I work full time and a breastfeeding mother to a 6.5mo old. I'm looking for suggestions on pumping and shipping breastmilk (i.e. while travelling for work). Any advice?
ReplyDeleteHi Brie - glad you liked it. I don't have personal experience in this area, because I tended to take Robert with me (which got expensive). A friend who did do it recommended "The Milk Memos," which I haven't read yet, but she liked it. I know that FedEx will do chilled shipments but I don't know the details. I do encourage you to review the TSA website and know that you *DO* have the right to transport your own breastmilk, but there might be tricks to what you can bring as freezer packs. We needed to keep something else cold on a plane recently and Uncle Internet said to freeze grapes and use those as cold packing, which worked well. The grapes were tasty, too.
ReplyDeleteI'm working on a travel post, I'll look forward to hearing how this goes for you!
Thanks for this post! Luckily my boss is willing to work with me and has an extra office available for me to pump in. My shared office has its own sink but good advice on getting extra parts.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, I've been feeling somewhat down on breastfeeding. It just seems like it's more of a hassle to breastfeed than to formula feed. People are more comfortable with a bottle than a boob. Last weekend I nursed in public for the first time. I refuse to nurse in a bathroom anymore. What do you usually tell people if breastfeeding makes them uncomfortable?
Hi Jamie,
ReplyDeleteI think we have all had this moment. There are sort of two things to address here, so I'll take them separately. The first one is the comfort issue. I think you mean emotionally and socially comfortable (although if you mean physically comfortable let me know - lots of help available for that). This is a biggie and I think I'll make a whole post about it. But the short answer is, to examine what it is that makes you uncomfortable. I found after a while that a lot of my militant lactivism was actually a defensive reaction based on an assumption that everyone was looking at me funny for nursing in public. In fact, the vast majority of people weren't paying me any attention at all. A small sub group were looking at me in a "yay she's breastfeeding!" way, with friendly smiles. And a smaller sub group looked, freaked out, and looked away. This is probably the group that has you nervous? And while they would be more comfortable if you were using a bottle, that's their problem, not yours. You're not nursing in front of a huge camera broadcasting into their living room, you're not nursing in their home, and you're probably not nursing anywhere they can't just choose to look away. It's a sad comment on American prudishness that they are more comfortable watching you feed your kid something so nutritionally inferior out of a plastic bottle than watching you do something perfectly natural, which you were designed by God and nature to do.
I nursed everywhere without apology after a while. I made two exceptions - church (which actually after a while I even gave up on as no one seemed to care) and the work place, the former being full of tiny little old men who I figured might actually have a heart attack, and the latter being somewhere that someone really couldn't leave without risking their livelihood. Of course it's up to you to decide what you are comfortable with, but I would encourage you to think of your breastfeeding as not only every bit as publicly appropriate as a bottle, but as a way to say to all who might see you just how dedicated you are to giving your kiddo the very best possible. That said, if you still feel ambivalent, try a nursing cover up. I have one to spare if you want it - Kiddo hated it and now I'm so brazen I probably wouldn't even bother for they hypothetical next one.
As to hassle, I think learning to nurse is harder than learning to use formula, but once you've got the hang if it, it's way easier. Think how much junk you have to gather together to go anywhere with your little one. Now imagine that you had to also guess how much Kiddo would want to eat, make sure you had enough clean bottles to serve that much, possibly mix the formula before you go or have to worry about whether you would be comfortable with the water supply while you were out (maybe you're not squeemish about tap water but some mamas are) and then haul all that extra stuff around with you. Also you have to keep ahead on formula supply at home or make late night trips to the store when you go out, and that stuff is expensive! And don't even get me started on traveling. I loved how easy it was to feed Kiddo when we were on an airplane, and of course this also soothed his ears during takeoff and landing.
Obviously I am biased and have a bit of an agenda, but I think breastfeeding is extremely rewarding, much easier than formula feeding, and something to be totally proud of, not shy about. I bet you will soon feel much more comfortable.