Pumping Survival Kit

Even though we said goodbye a couple of years ago, Miss Medela made her way back into my life.

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Being a breastfeeding mom AND a full-time working mom was NOT how nature intended motherhood to work—it is not natural to be sitting hooked up to a noisy pump while your baby is rocking peacefully in someone else’s arms. Sorry Miss Medela—I just don’t bond with you quite like I bond with my child.

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Not only is it not natural, and not providing the nurturing connection between mother and child, it’s damn difficult. Every chance you get, you’re sitting by yourself with your pump. Forget eating lunch or taking a break with your colleagues. A working-nursing mom’s only lunch buddy is Miss Medela. And the relationship doesn’t end when you leave work. Every night you’re washing the pump parts out, making sure you have everything ready for the next day when you’ll be lunching again with your only work friend—the pump. Now, I do consider myself lucky because I work in a school where every two classrooms are connected by a back office. There is an extreme amount of privacy AND I can keep Miss Medela set up all of the time. I do not have to put it away or pack it up or carry it back and forth from home to work. And thank goodness, I do not have to pump in a bathroom, like others have had to do!

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For those of us who do not produce a whole lot of excess milk, pumping can be damn stressful. Before I went back to work, milk production was not a problem. I would sit in by nursing group and listen to the moms asking for advice on how to increase their milk production because they were “falling behind” now that they’ve returned to work. Been there. Done that. Happened to me with my first child. Probably going to be there again, I thought.

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Incidentally I have a friend who would literally pump an extra five ounces (like a WHOLE extra bottle) every morning. This is just not human. For me, I was elated if I had a surplus of just a few ounces a day. I was pretty diligent in building up my freezer supply before I had to return to work. And I was blessed that my maternity leave, coupled with the teacher-summer-off, made my little boy a whopping 7 months old when I returned to work full-time. Seven months of exclusive, uninterrupted, as-nature-intended breastfeeding.

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I do have a few things I’ve learned along the way that have made my relationship with Miss Medela go a little more smoothly.

The following is what I would call my pumping survival kit:
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1. A multitude of ways to make your pump do it's job: My pump had all of the following options available, and I bought them all. In fact, I wonder if Medela sells stock options...I should have purchased some!

A. AC adapter for car (great invention!)
B. AC cord battery pack (plus lots of extra batteries)
C. AC cord that came with it, PLUS an extra AC cord

2. Duplicates or even triplicates of pump parts.
At Baby Beloved, my breastfeeding-all-things-baby-and-motherhood store, I was able to purchase all of the extra parts (tubing, cups, valves, etc) for a very reasonable price. You can purchase some of the extra parts at Babies R Us, but they don't carry everything like Baby Beloved does. This cut down on having to wash items so often. I am up to EIGHT complete sets of horn-valve combos. This means that I can pump FOUR times before I have to wash a single part.

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3. Keep the pump at work, if possible.

When I went back to work after I had my first child, a friend who was done using her pump motor loaned me hers. With all of my extra parts, I was able to have a permanent pumping station set up both at home AND at work. How nice to simply bring bottles back and forth, rather than a big pump bag. How nice NOT to have to set up and take apart my pump every single day. This alone was worth every penny of every extra pump parts, and I'll bet the convenience of the two pump stations contributed to my sanity since I was having to pump both at home and at work after Drew decided to wean himself earlier than I had hoped.

Now that I am a mother of a second child, I am lucky enough to own two of my OWN pumps, because my health insurance foot the bill for a pump with EACH child. So I can keep one at work full-time and keep the other set up at home or bring with me on day trips or whatever.

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4. A microwave bottle sterilizer. I think the worst part of pumping is washing/sterilizing all the parts. Medela makes nice steam bags, but they don't hold that many parts. I keep a steam-bag with each pump all of the time, so no matter where I am, if there’s a microwave, I can sterilize. However, I purchased an Avent microwave bottle steamer, which is advertised to hold something like six bottles plus the nipples and tops. This steamer holds LOTS of pumping stuff and is done very quickly – 4 minutes. It makes my pumping life so much easier.

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5. Patience, flexibility, and an understanding that even though you cannot do it all, you are still an awesome mother. My first child began to wean himself at about six months, when I went back to work and he LOVED the easiness of bottles. The milk came so quickly, he didn’t have to work for it or wait for it. I kept on pumping at work AND at home. I pumped ‘round the clock. I almost pumped myself into the loony bin. Even with all of the pumping, I was still regularly dipping into my freezer supply which I had worked really hard to build up while I was on maternity leave. I was sad that Drew didn’t follow the plan of nursing when we were home together and only taking bottles at daycare. I was disappointed in myself because I had planned to exclusively nurse for a year, and I could see that it just wasn’t going to happen. I was mad that I didn’t produce mad amounts of milk (no pun intended), and therefore had to pump at home and at school and everywhere in between just to keep him exclusively on breast milk for as long as I did. Around 9 months, I had to start supplementing with formula.

This time around, I still built up the freezer supply, and nursed almost exclusively until I went back to work. In fact, this time around, I barely allowed Brayden to have a bottle unless absolutely necessary. I still planned to nurse until a year, but I was very aware that my plan was only my plan. Brayden was really the one controlling the plans. Having gotten teeth much earlier than Drew, Brayden went through a biting phase that made it next to impossible for me to feed him for a week or so, and I thought that was the end. But it wasn’t. And as school started, I was already dipping into my freezer supply to keep up with Brayden’s needs (even though I was pumping THREE times a day at work). I started experimenting with Similac Organic Formula in Brayden’s cereal to make sure his tummy would survive formula. Then I started letting him drink a couple of ounces of formula after he ate his cereal to see how he reacted to the taste. Things were going FANTASTIC until the Similac Formula recall. Why not add just a little more guilt to a working mother’s repertoire? But I’m trying not to let ANY of that get to me. Brayden still nurses once or twice a day. He gets a combination of fresh breast milk, frozen breast milk, and formula in his bottles throughout the week. He is happy and healthy, and I’m doing my best. That's about all a mother could ask for!