Making Pumping at Work Work

It’s my second week back to work and I’m so relieved how well pumping at work is going so far. I struggled with keeping it up with Noah and we started supplementing with formula about two months after I had gone back to work. I don’t regret that decision at all and I have an even more relaxed attitude about it now. I’ll pump as long as I feel good about it, but the moment it becomes stressful, I will slow down and supplement with formula. My sanity is simply higher up on my priority list. In a perfect world I would breastfeed exclusively, but as I have previously said, it’s more important to me not to be stressed out about it than to avoid formula at all cost. I already am under enough pressure as it is, and exclusively breastfeeding is simply something that’s not the highest on my priority list (anymore). Having said that, I’m really glad (and care more than I thought I would, to the point where I feel proud at the end of the day) that it has been going so smoothly. 

My daily schedule now looks something like this: My alarm goes off at 4:50am, I hit snooze once, then get up at 5am. I get dressed, brush my teeth, make a cup of coffee and breakfast to go, grab my lunch out of the fridge (yes, I’ve been making my lunch every single day so far!), and pump. Ava usually nurses at around 4am, so by 5:30am I pump about 3oz which go straight into the freezer (yay!). I leave the house between 5:45am and 6am and get to work just before 7am. 

At work, I pump three times each day: at 8:30am, 11am, and 2pm. I have 30 minutes blocked on my calendar, but don’t need more than 15 minutes. I pump 4oz (or more) each time – exactly what Ava eats at daycare every three hours (she even eats around the same time that I pump plus one additional session right before I pick her up, so 4 x 4oz). I then pick up the kids around 4:30pm and pump one more time when we get home at about 5pm, sometimes a bit later. Those 4oz plus the three bags I pump at work is what we’re sending to daycare the next day. 

In the evening, she usually goes to bed without eating again, but sometimes I nurse her for just a little bit. She goes to sleep in her crib and when she wakes up for her first night feeding (don’t ask me what time, probably around 10pm or 11pm), I take her to bed with us so she can eat and I can fall right back asleep. I am honestly not sure if she eats again before her 4am feeding every night, I barely wake up for it when she does. Works for me!

So I’ve not only been pumping just as much as she eats during the day, but putting an additional 3oz in the freezer every day, in addition to the stash I had already built up during the first weeks when I was just producing lots of extra milk. I feel pretty good about that. 

So how am I making it happen? 

First of all, it’s a commitment. It doesn’t work if you don’t make time for it. I have 30 minutes each day blocked on my calendar to go pump. I’m flexible enough that I can move it around when meetings come up or go longer than expected, but I will make sure to then pump before or after. 

People I work with know that I’m pumping. I hate using the term, so I will say things like “sorry I have to go, mom’s duties” *wink* or “I need to go use the mommy’s room first”. No need to explain it in detail, but making people aware of it around me has made it easier to be matter of fact about it and treat it like any other important meeting I have to attend. 

Scheduling time on your calendar is crucial. This is one thing I didn’t do with Noah, and I think it was a huge contributing factor to why I quickly had fewer and fewer pump sessions. Knowing you need to go pump and actually dropping what you’re doing are two different things. But having a reminder pop up on my calendar helps me stick to my schedule. This also prevents others from scheduling meetings during that time. 

Book a room if possible. Our mom’s rooms can now be reserved via Outlook which is fantastic. Last time there were so many instances where I would show up to a room only to find out that the room was already occupied, sometimes there would even be another mom already waiting in line. While they had clocks on the door which you could use to indicate when you’d be done, waiting for 10-15minutes three times a day adds up, especially when you’re already trying to be most efficient at work so you can leave on time to be with your new baby. It just wasn’t feasible, so instead of waiting or coming back or finding another room, I would skip more and more sessions due to this. So far there was only one day I got frustrated because the room was occupied even though I had booked the room. It turned out another mom had simply forgot to turn the “occupied” sign back to “available”. From now on I will just knock to make sure. If you can’t book it, try to find other ways that you can communicate with other moms and figure out what’s best. If it’s a problem for you, it likely is for them as well. 

Get in touch with the other moms who use the room. After the occupied sign incident, I decided to write a short letter to other moms using the room. It’s nothing more than introducing myself, sharing my regular pump hours, and opening things up for communication if issues come up. I think there are two other moms using the room regularly, one I already knew, and the other sent me an email after she saw my note, letting me know her regular pump times and introducing herself. Now, in case last minute scheduling conflicts come up, I know who to contact if I need to. 

There are tips and tricks to save time, and I’m still learning. For example, instead of bringing three (or 6 if you double pump; I do one at a time, just a personal preference) sets of pump parts, I bring only one and store it in a ziplock bag in the fridge until my next session. For the first few days I would then just wash the parts in the kitchen sink after my last session of the day and use a microwave steam bag to sanitize them, then dry them overnight at my desk. Now I just take them back home and run them through the dishwasher. I store my milk in breastmilk storage bags so I don’t have to use multiple bottles. They can go straight into the freezer on a Friday evening, and it’s so much quicker to warm up milk in one of these bags compared to a bottle. 

Don’t make things more difficult than they need to be. I mentioned I wash parts in the kitchen sink. I have no shame whatsoever when it comes to this, and don’t mind if this makes anyone uncomfortable. It’s just bottle parts and while I’m discreet about it, I no longer feel I need to hide this. When I was pumping for Noah I washed parts in the bathroom for some time because I felt uncomfortable doing it in the kitchen. Now, I don’t mind and it’s just one less thing in the whole process to worry about. And to be honest, I don't think anyone cares.

I get work done while I pump. I hate the feeling of sitting there for 15-30 minutes, waiting for the bottle to fill up, not being productive at all. So I keep a “please read me” folder in my inbox that includes emails and documents that don’t need my immediate attention but are useful to read to stay on top of what’s going on, which I go through while I’m pumping. This is why I often use the room for the whole 30 minutes even though it only takes a portion of it to actually pump. I would also use the room for conference calls that I attend but where I’m not expected to contribute much (if they only made a pump that didn’t make such a ridiculous sound). 

Connecting with other moms can be so helpful too. I belong to a mom focused group on Facebook that’s connected to a podcast I really enjoy. I had never really done this before – talking to strangers in a virtual world, but it’s a fantastic resource! It’s a space where you can ask any kind of question, no matter how embarrassing it may seem, and get great responses and just hear other mom’s struggles and success stories. Questions about pumping come up regularly and it’s sometimes just comforting to read that what you’re doing doesn’t seem to be completely off track, and that other moms have some of the same issues or questions I do.

So, so far so good. We'll see how this goes. I know I'm super excited for Ava to start showing interest in real food. I let her lick on my banana the other day and she wasn't impressed. I'm sure that will change soon enough.