Note: The TSA policies about bringing breastmilk on board have recently changed. See this post for an update.
This Sunday's New York Times had a great first hand account of the hazards of traveling for work while breastfeeding.
The author, who had to travel from Maine to Wisconsin to attend a conference on potatoes, had pumped enough milk for her baby while away. On the trip, she finds herself pumping in airport bathrooms, in the airplane bathroom, and standing up in a closet at a farm.
On the way home, she checks some milk in a cooler with her luggage, and then tries to bring some of the milk she's pumped back on the plane (a topic we've discussed in a prior post):
Then the security agent said that I couldn’t take any milk onto the plane unless I had a baby with me. I told him that I wouldn’t have milk in a bag if I had my baby with me.
We started arguing. I feared I was going to miss my flight. I knew it was fruitless to try to explain how much this milk meant to me, that it was, at this point, my only primal connection to my baby back home. It was mother’s milk — was I really going to have to throw it in the trash? Yes. I tossed it into the gray can.
Sadness shot through me, then anger. “How many women have you made throw away breast milk today?”
“Six,” he said.
“I’m sure they were all as livid as I am.”
“Actually,” he said, “You’re the nicest one.”
I wished I had been meaner.
I'll let you discover what happened to the milk in her checked luggage. Is it just me, or do your toes curl to when you picture throwing milk into the garbage?
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