Boob Nation: Pumping at Work Sucks
Like to breastfeed? Think it's the best thing ever? Enjoy hunkering down in a bathroom stall while balancing machinery on your knees? Have I got an activity for you! Pack up your fridge baggies, your Pump-in-Style, and your nursing shields and head into work for a few hours (7-10 is best). While there, take a break every 2-3 hours to excuse yourself to the ladies...whip out your ladies, hook yourself up and voila! You too can experience the fulfillment of pumping at work.
Salon interviewed the authors of "Milk Memos: How Real Moms Learned to Mix Babies and Business and How You Can Too." In this case, "business and babies" means "business and breast-pumping" and the writers offer up tips such as "juggling a career, breast-feeding, family and all of life's other demands is possible (but not always easy or graceful)" and are quite persuasive on the need for companies to provide a clean safe place for women to pump, but I still don't buy it for a second.
I agree with the authors that more workplace support for breastfeeding and more honest discussions such as "excuse me, I need to go express milk” would go a long way to making the whole enterprise less stressful. But I’m sorry, it just doesn’t cut it. Lactating at work is a pain … an insufferable, inconvenient production that unless you have a private office with a lock and sufficient maternity leave (more than the paltry 6 weeks usually allotted) no amount of company support is going to alleviate. Without sufficient maternity leave to get things sorted with baby and caregiver and hormones, a nice clean room is completely insufficient to the task. No wonder most women in this country only breastfeed for 7 weeks. To do otherwise is a feat of super human strength and determination.
