I pumped at work for about a year now and this week I finally took
the pump back home. I will keep it around for a few more weeks just in case
there is any trouble but everything went well so far even
though I now breastfeed only when I am with my baby. This weekend we
probably had our last flight without an assigned seat and the flight
attendant was very surprised to hear he has less than two years. The
amount of milk I was extracting slowly decreased over time, probably
because he is eating much less during the night although he still wakes
up frequently for comfort especially towards the morning. I never got to
use the designated room because it was on a different floor and I was
always tight on time. We are still dreadfully late in the morning and I like to leave early so R. gets shorter days at the crèche.
There
were a few moments when I was pulling my hairs because of pumping.
I found a large scarf gave
me enough privacy to save some time by pumping at my desk but I am fortunate to share the
office with another parent that was always very gracious and
understanding even when pumping got noisy. Occasionally things were less convenient when somebody was coming in the office to have a chat or
when the cleaning lady was washing the floor during my pumping break.
I adjusted my schedule and I managed to avoid putting up a "pumping in progress"
sign. Things you do repeatedly wear you down more than a bad day from time to time. This only increased my respect for people that mow the grass or lay a brick un top of another day after day. Cleaning all the small parts took longer than I was expecting so each
pumping session took at least half an hour. The plastic parts got mouldy after the first few weeks because I was not thorough enough and everything had to be replaced. It gave me nightmares just to think that I was feeding that to my little one.
I cut short my lunch breaks and somehow I managed to supervise two interns, teach a class
on deep learning, give two talks for our group, advance a research
project, get two articles published, qualify as a lecturer in France and
receive a Marie Curie research grant for the next two years. All this got me back to my highschool weight but not without some more gray in my hair. On the plus size by now so many people have seen my breasts in parks, shops, airports, planes, and on the street that I find it hard to believe that at some point I was considering being in a relationship without showing my breasts because I was too insecure about my bra size.
