Pumping at work

[BabyToothbrush]

Hi, I'm going back to work very soon and my 11mo is breastfed. My other two DC were bottle fed by this age and Im feeling really anxious about pumping at work.

I will likely not have a sink in the room I can pump in which will mean washing my pump in the staff kitchen sink. Also will have to store my milk in the staff kitchen fridge. I'm really worried about comments from other staff members.

There's no freezer either so no way to use ice packs to transport the milk home either to keep the temp down, and it takes me 1-1.5hrs to get home via public transport.

I was thinking I would need to pump twice a day to start with and then hopefully decrease to once a day and then none but I don't know how long it will take for my supply to adjust? I will also still be with my baby 3-4 days a week and planning to continue breastfeeding on demand those days. But will that mean my supply won't adjust for my working days?

Just any reassurance from anyone who has been in a similar position would help me feel better I think.

I’m pumping and back in work. I didn’t like how clean sink in work was so I bought extra parts and just clean at home. For the fridge in work I have a cool bag that I put in the fridge so the milk isn’t on show. We do have a freezer box so I pop the ice blocks in there.

for pumping I just go into a meeting room and pump and continue to work on my laptop.

Mine went to nursery at 11 months and I just fed her in the morning and when she got back home and bedtime on nursery days, and on demand on the other four days of the week. I could not be faffed with pumping at this age! I'm sure supply has gone down, but still seems to be fine to her and as she's on solids, I wasn't concerned.

Medela has wipe clean wipes you can use for your pump parts as well as bags you can use in the refrigerator to store everything discreetly.

I'm planning for my baby to mostly have formula when away from me, I'm only planning to pump for comfort. At the moment in my working hours they'd normally breastfeed around 4 times a day. So I'm thinking I would be very uncomfortable to suddenly not feed at all in that time hence my plan to pump twice initially and gradually reduce as my supply settles?

I have a cool bag and milk storage bags. So planning to keep the milk in them in the fridge. However if I pump more than once I'd have to carry the second milk bag of milk back through the corridors and staff kitchen to store it which would be visible to whoever is around.

I will look up the cleaning wipes thanks, that would probably be useful.

BF network told me BF on none nursery days is fine even without pumping on nursery days as your body will adjust/make the milk when they need it. Not sure if you have done a trial run, but I could easy go 10 hours without pumping & she then just has a massive feed whenever she next feeds. She also feeds on demand in the day and quite regularly.

I have a ceres chill milk storage bottle which you fill with ice in the morning & it keeps the milk fridge temp for 24 hours (or longer if you replace the ice) so you’d not need to use the fridge at all if you have ice at home. I think mom cozy also do something similar. Depends if you’re willing to invest though when it sounds like you might not be a long term pumper!

It’s a juggling act but I also had a long commute and no dedicated fridge at work.

Ways I got around this:

• Opaque bag to store everything in the fridge. I’d carry this bag to and from the mother’s room.
• I used a manual hand pump. Much faster and you can store it in the fridge, unwashed, in a freezer bag
• Medela cooler bag for breastmilk. If you freeze at home and store in the fridge then it should stay cool til end of day. I would decant the bottles at home into milk bags & freeze them.

If you’re only pumping for comfort, can you simply pour the milk down the sink?

My supply adjusted very quickly and we continued breastfeeding til 2. Boobs are clever things.

I went back to work at 12 months with a baby feeding on demand day and night. I had similar issues with storing milk at work so decided to give DD cows milk at nursery. I then just pumped with a hand pump for comfort in one of the offices (the only private space available), tipped the milk down the sink and rinsed the pump and cleaned it properly once I got home.

Within a couple of weeks I could get away with just pumping once in a 9 hour day and after another month I stopped pumping all together. It didn't seem to bother DD either - she had cows milk at nursery 3 days a week and breast milk when we were together. We're down to feeding once daily at 26 months now.

It's such a shame workplaces don't offer suitable facilities to breastfeeding mothers though and the first few times of ripping hard earned milk down the sink felt so wrong!

I don’t think you will need to pump twice. When I first went back to work (3 days a week) my daughter was 5 months. I was out of the house for 10 hours a day and only pumped once during that time. This was many years ago and my daughter was already on solids. I am sure it would have been different if I had still been exclusively breastfeeding.

I took a pump in and stored the milk in the fridge during the day in a padded cool bag. It wasn’t obvious what it was and no one ever commented on it.

The milk stayed cool enough and I either froze it when I got home or just gave it to the childminder to use the following day.

Supply wasn’t an issue. There was no problem with adjusting between working days and non-working days.

Yea I could dump the milk however the room I pump in is unlikely to have a sink in. So that would mean carrying the milk into staff kitchen and dumping down that sink (highly likely in front of others) or taking it to the toilet sink. And honestly I really don't want to waste the milk, I dislike pumping so if I have to do it for comfort I do really want to keep the milk. I will feed it to my DC, the nursery said if some days we have some expressed milk to take in we can do that. I just am not relying on the pumping for that iyswim as I know I won't pump enough. I'm only planning to pump for 5 mins each side at a time for comfort.

I did a 6hr stint once the other week and was really uncomfortable by the time I got back, then DC only fed one side so I had to pump the other. I could be 'away' from DC for up to 13hrs at a time when I'm back at work though depending on if theyre sleeping when I leave (sleep and night feeds all over the place still).

Thanks everyone it's really helpful hearing your experiences. Maybe I could get another opaque bag of some sort to carry the second lot of milk to the kitchen if I need to pump twice.

I'm hoping that they will be able to get me rooms with sinks in to pump at least but not sure how likely that is.

Mine is also 11 months - I feed just before I leave for work (around 8am), then as soon as I'm back with baby (4.30/5pm), and I haven't pumped since I went back to work a few weeks ago. I feed as she wants on days I'm with her - usually twice within the time I'm away from her on work days. I do feel uncomfortable by the time I feed late afternoon but it's OK. She doesn't like formula really, they offer at nursery but she seems to get by with food and water, and BF loads in the evening! Can you take it home and put in baby's bath? It's really good for skin. At least then it's not wasted, but it doesn't matter if it's out the fridge. I wouldn't worry about your supply and varying between work and non-work days, at that age it should be fine, it's not like the volumes they take in the early months.

at that age I just refrigerated the pump parts between pumping and then washed and sterilized once a day.

there really is nothing wrong with other people seeing breastmilk. I wouldn’t to store it in a bag or something just so some idiot doesn’t accidentally nick it for their tea, but pumping is perfectly normal.

I know I was lucky to work in a place that had to open additional lactation rooms because the existing ones were so busy. that positive culture makes such a difference. If it doesn’t exist for you, remember that you can be the person who helps it to exist for the next mother.

For goodness sake ... ask them to let you know what facilities are being provided and stand up for yourself if it's not suitable

Have you got a pump already? They often come with a cooler bag that with the pump, all the pump parts, the bottles and an ice pack. Basically if you’re storing your milk in the staff fridge is closed containers inside a opaque closed cooler bag no one is going to notice or care that your milk is in it. Ice packs will stay cool for quite a long time, especially if they are in the fridge all day and not outside. Keeping the used pump parts in the fridge or in the cooler bag with the ice pack when traveling is a good idea if you can’t wash them straight away.

If you don’t want to pump then just swap in a bottle of formula to replace one feed one week before work starts. And then drop one more feed when work does start. A week is plenty of time for your body to adjust. At 11months post partum you will probably have more flexibility than you think anyway.

Hi everyone, I'm back and still just as clueless really!

So at the moment I'm away from my 12 month old 3 days a week. I've been doing two short pumping sessions each day and I was really hoping to get this down to once by now but I've already had two bouts of back to back mastitis, and am generally in significant discomfort when I've tried to extend the intervals. Im only in the office one day a week at the moment and I hate pumping there as much as I thought I would. So I'm desperate to stop, but I can't see how, as my supply still really isn't adjusting even after a few weeks!

I'd be quite happy to reduce my baby's daytime breastfeeds on the other days too, as I'm assuming a more consistent feeding pattern would help and this would reduce my supply? However my baby communicates very clearly when they want to breastfeed and quickly gets upset if I try to distract/don't let him straight away! And he's too young to understand.

If anyone has been through anything similar I'd love to hear about your experiences and if you have any advice for me.