By Ambrosia Brody of Random Aspects of (My) Life

Serving as the breakfast, lunch and dinner buffet for a tiny human is a lot of pressure and can be exhausting. Sure, pumping gives you 30 minutes of free time to relax in an empty room, just you and your pump, and it burns calories and allows room for snacking on junk food (as in shoveling Inn-n-Out fries and a milkshake in your face on your way home from work) and serving yourself a second helping at dinner without feeling like you need to work out for a week straight to right your wrongs. BUT those perks don’t outweigh the downsides of trying to pump at work.

Here are seven struggles of being a working mom who pumps:

Attire: Layers are everything when you’re a working mom pumping at work. As in layer a tank or nursing tank under your blouse, collared shirt, dress or suit. Of course, you can skip the tank if you aren’t scared of sitting shirtless in the pumping room or leaking through your dry-clean-only business attire, but I play it safe.

Then there is the whole trying to dress super cute and biz-ness-like but forgetting that the dress or shirt you’re wearing is not easily removed. Have you attempted to unzip a dress by yourself in a storage closet with a sometimes working lock? It’s terrifying.

So much nakedness: Let’s talk about those nightmares of sitting naked in a storage closet, ‘cause it happens. And if you aren’t wearing a tank, that means you’re most likely hunched over, trying to hide your boobs from anyone who may walk in, all the while staring at your linea nigra (does it ever go away?) and baby pooch. Talk about feeling vulnerable.

The lacking pumping room: The first time I asked my human resources staff member where I could pump, she stared at me like I was speaking some foreign language. “I need a place to pump … that’s not the bathroom,” I reminded her. Luckily, she set me up in a conference room that not only had a comfy couch and table, but also a working lock.

Fast forward to my second baby, and that HR lady is gone. And so is the conference room. For the past year and four months, I’ve been pumping in a room where old tables, chairs, non-working computer monitors and modems have gone to die. The sign outside the door reminds people I am in there, but that has not stopped the occasional attempt to open the door — complete with handle jiggling, knocking and me yelling, “Occupied!”

But this is better than that time someone walked in on me, so I really can’t complain. Or can I?

Working in a male-dominated office: I can’t be the only woman embarrassed to carry a bottle of freshly pumped milk around the office, right? I mean, just knowing that people may look at the bottle and realize that it came from my boobs is enough to give me the heebie jeebies. Running from the makeshift “pumping room” to the lunch room, holding the bottle under my shirt or hiding it with both hands and praying no one is eating lunch — or worse, that that person is not a man – has become a daily game. It’s called, “Can I discreetly carry milk to the lunch room without having to make awkward conversation?”

Scheduling meetings around pumping break: Some moms may be better at this than I am; others may have more control of their daily schedule, which is awesome. In the journalism field, news doesn’t stop for engorged breasts. Calls happen, meetings are scheduled, interviews pop up when you least expect them and you, the pumping mom, have to deal.

Fingers crossed that meetings/interviews don’t run 8 hours long because when they do, that feeling of if-I-don’t-pump-right-now-my-breasts-will-explode-and-this-office-will-be-flooded-with-milk will be the only thing on your mind.

 Forgetting the pump parts: The meeting finally ends; you’ve answered every single email and the story is submitted, leaving you time to finally pump. It’s only after you’ve taken off your shirt that you realize you left the membrane at home. As in the vital, tiny little white rubbery piece required to successfully pump your breasts – and relieve the pressure. No parts means either sitting on the toilet, squeezing milk into toilet paper, hoping the girl in the next stall believes in a courtesy flush or walking around the office with engorged breasts that hurt like hell.

Note to self: Keep extra parts at work.

Getting mastitis from not pumping enough: It’s like the flu complete with chills, fever, all-over achiness and night sweats, but mix in a sharp pain that radiates through you anytime you touch the infected breast. Oh, and you have to nurse through the pain, which feels like your boob is on fire and is reminiscent of that first time your baby latched on. So in the words of Britney Spears, You better Work [pump], bitch.

But really, no matter what, make sure to pump. Nothing gets in the way of moms providing for their children — not even crappy pumping conditions.

*****

About the Author

Ambrosia Brody is a full-time editor, journalist and mother to two spirited daughters. She lives in Southern California in a beach city but hates the sand; enjoys people watching but hates small talk. She started to blog at Random Aspects of (My) Life when she realized everything she knew about parenting was wrong. Connect with her on her blog, Facebook or Twitter.