I was speaking to some new mothers who have recently returned to work and they were speaking about pumping breast milk in the office.
In the case of one, her company had moved to swish new offices while she was on maternity leave made entirely of glass. “Where,” she asked her partners “am I going to pump?” They looked at their feet and suggested a glass room off reception. When she had withered them with a single glance, they suggested the bathroom. She reduced them to little piles of dust and they finally found the one room in the building that was not a toilet, not made of glass and came with a lock.
My other friend travels around for work and has to ask for a room where she can pump. Her favourite was when she was given a room with a CCTV camera.
None of this can cap the story a Finnish friend told me in Brussels. She worked for a very right-on development NGO. One day, while she was pumping at lunch time, her (female) boss came into the office and started talking to her about work. My friend said that this wasn’t a great time for her. Her boss said, “Oh I don’t mind,” and kept talking until my friend pointed out that she DID mind and asked her boss to leave which the boss duly did saying there was no need to be embarrassed.
The whole thing is fraught, I tell you, fraught. Share your own story, ah go on, do.
I am lucky enough to have my own office, so pumping in privacy was never a problem. However, when the milk had duly been extracted I would then carry it (in one of those clear plastic milk bags you get from Boots), plus the pump, round the corner, along a corridor, and round another corridor to get to the kitchen for storage/cleaning purposes. Amazing how many people you meet when you happen to be carrying bags of your own bodily fluids around. I suppose in retrospect I could have got a non-clear bag and put all the bits and pieces inside it, but somehow I didn’t think of that.
Fair play to whose who are dedicated to breast feeding enough to continue when they return to work. After 3 children my pump was banjaxed for number 4 – thanks be to God – as I hated the yoke.
Dot, did you leave it in the fridge at work…
And, C, as discussed, one starts to just care less…do you think this is why youngest children are often the most laid back?
Yes. The freezer compartment, in fact. And then in theory I took it home in an insulated bag at the end of the day to be defrosted and fed to my baby when I was next away, but unhappily I tended to forget and build up a stockpile. My poor colleagues.