K-kitten is almost 11 months old now and I’m still breastfeeding. I’ve been back to work now full-time outside of the home since she was the tender age of six weeks. I’ve pumped at work and been able to provide her with enough breastmilk to avoid having to supplement with any formula while I’m away from her. I wanted to share some of the things I have discovered and learned from this journey to hopefully help other pumping/working moms stay encouraged and hopeful.
1)She ate more than I pumped. It terrified me, I was 100% positive that I needed to pump at least as much or more than she was eating at every feeding to keep up. Some days she was eating 18 or 19 ounces of milk when at best I was only bringing home about 16. At that rate, our small freezer supply would die out and I would have to bring in outside nutrition (in the form of formula).
Then I made a fantastic discovery! I asked her caregivers to note what time she ate and how much for a couple of days. I also asked them to kind of notate what she was doing and why they decided to give her a bottle (these were family members, so I really wasn’t being too mean I hope). I discovered that she was eating a lot more with them than she would have nursed if I were home all that day. I also discovered that sometimes she wouldn’t finish the bottles entirely.
I had been putting milk in 3 ounces at a time in bags, so my first step was to reduce that. I made 2 ounce and 1 ounce bags in addition to always making 3 ounce bags. It made for a little more work, but it was a lot less disheartening to throw out less “liquid gold” and warm up a little more if she wanted it.
The kicker was: I asked my caregivers to try to distract before assuming hunger. I didn’t say don’t give her the bottle, but if it had only been an hour since she had a good 3 or 4 ounce bottle and she stops crying when you pick her up and go outside. Chances are she was just bored.
Doing these things, and encouraging her to nurse more at night (reverse cycle), she went from an 18 ounce during workday barracuda to a 10 ounce or less perfectly happy and healthy infant. She passed all of her well-baby checks with flying colors!
2)Finding the time (or the place) to pump at work. I work in a predominately male field/office. Talking to the boss-men about pumping breastmilk was the second hardest thing I’ve ever talked to them about (being pregnant being numero uno). I felt like it was going to be terribly hard for them to understand how important this was to me and my family. I was surprised.
Just the simple act of talking to them before I officially came back to work allowed them to mention it to a few of my co-workers who would later be the offices I “occupied” when I needed the space and privacy. No one questioned it, and no one still questions it.
I had to get brave. Working in the field a lot I’ve had to walk up to complete strangers everywhere from hospitals to small offices and ask to borrow a room with and outlet and explain why I needed it. While not all of them had a quick answer for me, they all helped me out in any way they could. A male manager even stood outside an break room door for me while I pumped since it had no lock and they had no other room to offer me.
3)I’ll never be able to pump more for when she’s bigger. I was sure watching all my friends children grow up and go to increasingly larger bottles of formula that I would never be able to keep up milk production for bottles like that.
Funny thing is, she’s never needed a bottle like that. She’s still using the little four ounce nursers she’s had since she was a tiny one and at most she’ll take about 6 ounces. She’s 11 months old, eats limited solids, and still only eats anywhere from 8 to 15 ounces of breastmilk a day while I’m at work. She nurses the most at night.
4)I’ll never be able to function at work if she nurses all night. I thought if I had to keep feeding her at night I would be a zombie or worse during the day. When she was really small and she slept in her crib most of the night, I can say that was partially true, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had imagined. Then one day I took her to bed with me in the guest room. We have been there ever since.
She eats when she wants and I sleep to my heart’s content. I was so scared of her falling out of bed that I still sleep in the guest room where it’s a daybed with a trundle bed underneath (a second pull out bed). I pull the second bed out partially at night so if she does decide to go adventuring she just scoots off like a cushy staircase (by the way it does work, she can climb up and down it on purpose now).
Sometimes we still start out in her crib and end up in bed, I could probably return her to her crib anytime she was done nursing, but to be honest, I’m just too lazy for that. I enjoy staying right where I am and not having to fully wake up.
5)Getting over the stigma, criticism, dirty looks, etc. I hate it when people don’t understand what you’re doing and don’t care to try. On my last point in this post, it has to be the hardest to try to explain and give advice on.
People are mean, ignorant, and sometimes all-around self-righteous. I’m not saying everyone is, and I’m not saying anyone is stupid or doing it just because. I’m saying that there are people in this world that do not care if you feel you are doing what is best for yourself and/or your child and have no bad feelings about telling you exactly how they feel about it.
But in that paragraph, I have also given the answer. How they feel about it does not mean you have to feel the same way. You have no obligation to anyone but yourself for your own personal feelings. The best way to deal with those other things, is to simply educate with a small tidbit of factual information, politely accept criticism, reinforce that you do not have to accept their point of view, and carry on about your business.
You do not have to have a debate in the supermarket check-out line, you do not have to explain yourself, and you most certainly do not have to stop.
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Have you encountered problems with breastfeeding/pumping at work that I haven’t mentioned here? Did you do things differently? What worked for you.
