Welcome to this month's Carnival of Breastfeeding!
This month's theme is breastfeeding and working. For more great posts on this topic, check out the links at the bottom of this post.I'm pleased to share a guest post on this topic written by Jennifer, working mother of a 3 year old and 6 month old. I'd been wanting to write some practical tips on pumping at work, but her story really sums it up nicely. Not everyone has the
flexibility or facilities she has for pumping, but I think that many of
you will find her suggestions useful. Enjoy!
I’m a full time working mom with an active 3 year old
and a 6 month old whom I’m currently breastfeeding. I just started
adding solid foods to her diet after exclusively breastfeeding for her first 6 months.
I hear all the time from other working moms that it is so difficult to work
full time and breastfeed - that they just cannot figure it out and so have
had to supplement with formula or stop breastfeeding altogether. I want
everyone to know that it is possible and you can make it work. Breastfeeding
is not just for stay at home moms or those who work part time.
Here are a few suggestions for successfully breastfeeding while working full time:
1.
If possible, find child care near where you work. I go
almost every day on my lunch time to nurse my daughter, so I only have to pump
once in the morning and once in the afternoon. I, like a lot of women I know,
don’t pump as much as our babies would normally take from the breast so
it decreases the extra I need to pump later. For the first couple of months,
she was a slow nurser, but after a few months she became much faster, so I can
nurse her and get back to work in a ½ hr.
2.
Invest in a good, double electric pump—saves a
lot of time and is effective in keeping supply up.
3.
If you can’t pump as much as you need to put in
bottles, pump right before you go to bed. I pump then, which is about 2 hours after my
daughter goes to bed. I get enough more milk to keep up with her needs, and it helps keep up my supply. I breastfeed on the weekends, but still pump right
before bed so I have even more saved for during the week.
4.
Learn to pump hands free so, if you can, you can keep
working—talking on the phone, doing e-mail, etc. (People have no idea
that a LOT of the time when I’m returning their calls that I’m
pumping). I simply looped rubber bands through the eyeloops on my nursing bras.
Then I loop those over the pumping pieces to hold them in place. I just leave
the rubber bands on my bras. The only problem is that now that my daughter is
older, when I’m nursing, she reaches up and snaps me with them now and
then!
5.
This is the part people will think is crazy (and maybe
not necessary), but I set my alarm for 3am every night and go get my daughter
from her crib and feed her in my bed. It only takes about 10 minutes, and both
she and I doze. I do this to help keep up supply so I can pump as much as I
can. I honestly do not lose much sleep since I never turn on lights and just
do it in bed.
6.
About 3 weeks before I went back to work, I pumped
twice a day about one hour after any feeding so I could build up a freezer
supply of milk. That way I had bottles of milk to send on my babies first day
in childcare and a bit of a cushion if I had a bad pumping day. Gives me peace
of mind to have a bit of a freezer supply but you don’t want to have to
dip into it too much because anything you take from it, you aren’t
producing at the time and could hurt your supply. This is also good to have a
lot of practice with your pump so you are very comfortable with it before you
are using it at work.
7.
Order back up parts for your pump so if you lose
something or a piece breaks, you have a spare.
8.
Learn to pump or breastfeed anywhere. When I
first started I just could not believe I could possibly nurse in public or even
in my car. It is a matter of building confidence, so just do
it and practice, practice, practice. Planning by wearing nursing tops
(especially cute ones!). Having your pump all put together and ready helps.
And, it took me a while to realize, people really were not watching me much; they
are too busy with their own lives. Realizing this really helped me with my
confidence.
9.
Realize that almost any schedule can be worked around; just
plan and figure it out. I never realized it before, but I rarely do anything
at my job for more than 2-3 hours without a break. so I can run and pump
usually without a problem, even on a busy day of meetings.
10.
Start back to work in the middle of the week so it is
less overwhelming. Promise yourself you will keep up with breastfeeding for at
least a week once you go back to work. That gives you enough time to
figure out how to do it with your schedule and it just becomes part of what you
do.
11.
Enlist the aid of other women in your workplace. The
ladies I work with know that when I close my door, I’m pumping. They
will tell people who are looking for me I’m on a phone call—which is
not a lie. Often I will return calls while I’m pumping.
12.
I could not find many examples of schedules of how
working mom’s structure their day with pumping online so I will share
mine. Obviously, this would not work for everyone.
a. 6:30a—get
up and shower
b. 7am—nurse
baby, eat breakfast, feed older daughter
c. 7:30a—work
out to aerobics show. During commercials get breast pump parts and
everyone’s lunches together
d. 8am—leave
for work
e. 8:30a—drop
off kids and go to work
f.
9:30a—pump for 20 minutes
g. Noon—go
to my daughter’s childcare close to my office and nurse her (if I’m
traveling that day, pump)
h. 3pm
–pump
i. 5pmish—pick up kids
j.
5:30ish—arrive home and nurse daughter
k. 8:30pm—nurse
daughter and put her to bed
l.
9:30pm—wash pump parts for the next day
13.
Believe you can do it. At first I felt like my day
revolved around feeding my daughter, but now it just seems like part of my
normal work day. It only gets easier. It is best for your baby and you can
continue to burn an extra 500 calories per day!
Check out these other carnival posts:
