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Infant feeding

Get advice and support with infant feeding from other users here.

Original poster

Working from home, breastfeeding, zoom meetings

274 replies

jadelou85 · 30/09/2021 17:19

Since the lockdowns my company has set thing up to allow most of us to work from home so my whole return to work hasn't been the wrench / challenge that I thought it would be. We do have a lot of zoom meetings and to start with everyone including my boss was fine if I dropped out of meetings if I needed to feed. I still had the feeling some people thought I was using it as an excuse so a few weeks ago I just told my boss I needed to feed but I was OK to carry on with our meeting. I managed to be discreet and was pretty chuffed with myself until right at the end I had a mssive slip-up becuase I was paying more attention to the meeting than what I was doing. I probably wouldn't have attempted it again after that but since that day I've felt more and more pressure to 'just get on with it' and take the multi-tasking approach. He hasn't been direct about it but my boss has made more than one comment along these lines even though he was always fine with me dropping our occasionally before. I literally feel I'm being pressured into now and I don't know how to deal with it. I feel lucky to be allowed to work from home but it feels a bit like an ultimatum like stay on meetings if you need to BF or come back to the office. Can someone help me put this in perspective and even better suggest how to deal with it or how to approach the subject without it being any more uncomfortable than it needs to be?

OP posts:
Upsielazy · 05/10/2021 07:28

Another reason why working from home doesn't work. Even if you have childcare in place, you are evidently routinely distracted by having your child around whilst trying to work, if you are feeding a child presumably over 6 months during meetings that aren't that regular, and to the extent that you are worried others see you as using it as an excuse for a break. What would you do if you were in the office, would you actually have someone bring them in? They have to allow you to pump which is fair, but would still be less disruptive than always having them around. By all means go to HR, they wouldn't be unreasonable to say its more suitable for you to be back in the office and pump.

Bluntness100 · 05/10/2021 07:28

Op are you feeding a toddler or older child? If so then I think it’s better to wean and feed at set times rather than on demand, and you need to start managing that.

If you exposed yourself on camera to your colleagues I think that’s not ok and you need to resolve this by managing the feeding.

JasonMomoasgirlfriend · 05/10/2021 09:33

@Bluntness100 what the hell. If she is feeding a baby she is absolutely perfectly entitled to feed on demand. I cannot believe you wrote that.

If she exposed herself it's because she felt under pressure to have her camera on whilst feeding. She doesn't need to manage the feed, her workplace should accommodate her need to BF in private and it's hardly a big deal to turn a camera off.

Jesus Christ

Upsielazy · 05/10/2021 09:35

[quote JasonMomoasgirlfriend]@Bluntness100 what the hell. If she is feeding a baby she is absolutely perfectly entitled to feed on demand. I cannot believe you wrote that.

If she exposed herself it's because she felt under pressure to have her camera on whilst feeding. She doesn't need to manage the feed, her workplace should accommodate her need to BF in private and it's hardly a big deal to turn a camera off.

Jesus Christ[/quote]
But work are entitled to expect someone to be working during their working hours rather than balancing their child. If in the office and pumping or someone bringing them onto site would they leave a meeting to do so?

Upsielazy · 05/10/2021 09:35

Or arrange it around meetings.

JasonMomoasgirlfriend · 05/10/2021 09:38

@Upsielazy my work have to provide me a place to pump or feed my baby. They don't tell me when I can or can't.

I have meetings all through the day so the fact is I would leave a meeting to pump, yes.

There was a pp who had legal knowledge of it but companies can have additional policies that are more lenient do it depends on the workplace 🤷

MindyStClaire · 05/10/2021 09:41

It's a very rare working mother who would leave a meeting to pump unless she was engorged. Pumping can happen to a schedule - so can feeding. But feeding on demand isn't compatible with working at the same time.

EasterIssland · 05/10/2021 10:01

[quote JasonMomoasgirlfriend]@Upsielazy my work have to provide me a place to pump or feed my baby. They don't tell me when I can or can't.

I have meetings all through the day so the fact is I would leave a meeting to pump, yes.

There was a pp who had legal knowledge of it but companies can have additional policies that are more lenient do it depends on the workplace 🤷[/quote]
are you really telling me you'd leave a meeting to pump? unless your meetings are 9-5 non stop I see no reason to leave meetings to pump...

Upsielazy · 05/10/2021 10:18

[quote JasonMomoasgirlfriend]@Upsielazy my work have to provide me a place to pump or feed my baby. They don't tell me when I can or can't.

I have meetings all through the day so the fact is I would leave a meeting to pump, yes.

There was a pp who had legal knowledge of it but companies can have additional policies that are more lenient do it depends on the workplace 🤷[/quote]
So they'd let you have your baby around you whilst you work and feed on demand with no regard for your meetings etc? They would be very lenient yes.

JasonMomoasgirlfriend · 05/10/2021 10:35

@EasterIssland the majority of my day is meetings (unfortunately!). I wouldn't need to further down the line but in earlier days my breasts were absolutely full within a couple of hours so yeh definitely need to leave to pump. I don't know what ops situation is or how old her baby is (has that been mentioned anywhere?)

Depends on the age of the baby I think.

EasterIssland · 05/10/2021 10:36

[quote JasonMomoasgirlfriend]@EasterIssland the majority of my day is meetings (unfortunately!). I wouldn't need to further down the line but in earlier days my breasts were absolutely full within a couple of hours so yeh definitely need to leave to pump. I don't know what ops situation is or how old her baby is (has that been mentioned anywhere?)

Depends on the age of the baby I think.[/quote]
op refuses to say age of the child

Fair enough if you're all day in meetings.. then I'd say it's normal if you have no breaks in between ... I've few meetings during the day so it was easy to pump between them when I went back to work at 6m.

JasonMomoasgirlfriend · 05/10/2021 10:40

Yes I think it definitely depends on your work type and day.

I mean, I think op just needs to clarify and then go forward from there. I wouldn't be overthinking it as much as she is and from what I can tell the manager hasn't said anything to her about it, it's just a feeling she gets. I don't think there's any harm in getting clarification.
But I do think age of child is relevant

EasterIssland · 05/10/2021 10:48

btw I also have a cameras on policy in many of my meetings. and within the same project I've had a few managers and some are more keen on having them on than others, they say if you were in the office would you be covering your face? as you'd not then please have it on. nothing to do with checking what others are doing or whether they're paying attention

Yerroblemom1923 · 05/10/2021 10:49

If you already have childcare in place then express and they can look after your child while you work. Your colleagues are getting annoyed as it's like doing another job on their time. Look after child FT or go PT. You need to decide what it's going to be really.
You wouldn't unload the washing machine while on a zoom call.

Bluntness100 · 05/10/2021 11:15

[quote JasonMomoasgirlfriend]@Bluntness100 what the hell. If she is feeding a baby she is absolutely perfectly entitled to feed on demand. I cannot believe you wrote that.

If she exposed herself it's because she felt under pressure to have her camera on whilst feeding. She doesn't need to manage the feed, her workplace should accommodate her need to BF in private and it's hardly a big deal to turn a camera off.

Jesus Christ[/quote]
You need to calm down. This crazed “omg she’s breastfeeding and it beats everything forever” narrative has to stop. It doesn’t. This is potentially an older child not a baby and it’s wrong to give the story that women should be able to breastfeed their child, irrelevant of age, during working hours and that colleagues just have to take it and take her accidentally exposing her naked breast to them on video calls because breastfeeding comes first.

This is likely an older child and if so then breastfeeding is a comfort and a habit for most. Even if her child has additional needs her employer is entitled to ask she focuses on work during the time she’s paid.

JasonMomoasgirlfriend · 05/10/2021 11:16

I literally said "But I do think age of child is relevant"...

JasonMomoasgirlfriend · 05/10/2021 11:17

But I don't know why you are assuming it's an older child?

MindyStClaire · 05/10/2021 11:31

@JasonMomoasgirlfriend

But I don't know why you are assuming it's an older child?
The refusal to answer questions about the age. OP knows she would get very different responses with a two month old vs two year old.
Severntrent · 05/10/2021 11:37

"Pumping can happen to a schedule - so can feeding. But feeding on demand isn't compatible with working at the same time."
This.

JasonMomoasgirlfriend · 05/10/2021 11:37

Could be, but we don't actually know either way

Severntrent · 05/10/2021 11:44

The OP just has to have a chat with her manager about it and suggest they refer to hr if necessary.
But I think having scheduled feeding times that fit around meetings is more reasonable than feeding on demand. I think it's hard to be 100% focused on meeting when feeding, especially once baby gets distracted etc.

JasonMomoasgirlfriend · 05/10/2021 11:46

Yup

Bluntness100 · 05/10/2021 11:49

The refusal to answer questions about the age. OP knows she would get very different responses with a two month old vs two year old.

Yes and lots of women take the full year off, ans the op is already back at work, and has been for awhile it seems.

So yes it could be an infant, but likely not.

There was a poster on here awhile ago complaining about time to breastfeed her “baby” who did in fact turn out to be about three.

The answers would indeed be very different if it was a toddler versus a three month old.

Usually if someone has to go back early and is breastfeeding a baby they have no hesitation in stating age. The ops refusal to do so on all her threads indicates this is an older child who is not ebf.

Feeding an eighteen month old on camera during working hours would receive much less support.

JasonMomoasgirlfriend · 05/10/2021 11:54

Yep ok agree with all that

Hiphopopotamus · 05/10/2021 14:21

The age thing is really relevant. I’m still breastfeeding my 16 month old DD (who refuses milk in any other form!) and I’m working full time, partly from home and partly in the office. Sometimes on a WFH, If DD is being looked after by my husband, I’ll pop down on my lunch break and give her a quick breast feed before her nap just because I’m home and I can. If I’m working in the office she just has milk morning and night. She’s absolutely fine if I’m not there because she’s a toddler who eats a varied diet and drinks water. It wouldn’t enter my head to breastfeed her during a meeting! Breastfeeding a toddler is a totally different situation to EBF a small baby, and the OPs refusal to answer about age makes it impossible to answer her question properly.

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