Adding to my breastfeeding while working checklist

Well, it seems I can't go a year of pumping while working without an embarrassing incident. During SchmoopyBoy's first year, while pumping in a room with a non-locking door, I got walked in on by no other than the Division Chief. As delightful as that was (NOT), it did provide me with a golden opportunity, and in our new building, I now have a dedicated pumping room, which IS totally awesome.

Now, I've mentioned before that Lil' Schmoo is not the greatest sleeper in the early mornings while I'm trying to get ready for work, so I typically have lots of opportunities to nurse until I am 'empty' before I leave for the day. On Monday, however, he slept uncharacteristically soundly. This was certainly convenient as I got ready, but I did leave feeling a bit more 'full' than usual. Monday mornings are super busy at my office - reports to create and review, weekly staff meetings, etc. I made my way to pump at the usual time, and when I looked down to unbutton my shirt I noticed a sizable wet milk mark on the front. I hadn't noticed feeling a milk letdown, so I have absolutely no idea how long I had been walking around like that. I should also mention that I am the only woman in my work group. And did I mention the weekly Monday morning staff meeting?

When I finished pumping I washed the front of my shirt, which resulted in nearly half my shirt being wet. I thought I was going to have put on the spare jacket I keep at my desk to cover myself for the rest of the day, which, considering how warm it's been in the office, I really wasn't looking forward to. Fortunately it's a dry heat and the fabric of my shirt dried quickly - no more embarrassing milk mark - thank goodness.

So let's see my breastfeeding while working checklist:

• Get walked in on while pumping - Check!
• Pump on the floor of a bathroom stall and have someone call out "What's that noise?" - Check!
• Pump in the car in a Costco parking lot just before an offsite meeting because it was around the corner and seemed to be the most discreet location in the vicinity, and hope no one notices - Check!
• Walk around the office clueless that I've got milk leaking onto my shirt - Check!

Ah, the things we go through for our babies!

Do you have any embarrassing stories to tell about breastfeeding or pumping? Let me know in the comments and we can commiserate together!


***

I'm celebrating World Breastfeeding Week with Natural Parents Network!
You can, too — link up your breastfeeding posts from August 1-7 in the linky below, and enjoy reading, commenting on, and sharing the posts collected here and on Natural Parents Network.

(Visit NPN for the code to place on your blog.)

The voice of a young woman on leadership

Forbes recently published an essay by a 19-year old undergraduate student on why Millennial women don't want to lead. I don't interact with many women in this age group these days, so it was an interesting perspective.

Her conclusion:

Ultimately, women equate leadership with perfection in a way that men don’t…

So, why don’t women want to lead? The answer is in the pages of the magazines we read and now even in the news coverage of the political debates we watch, which promote cultural standards that destroy women’s confidence and prescribe unattainable standards in all areas of our lives. In order for women to lead – for women to want to lead, to feel that we are capable of leading – we need to redefine leadership altogether. We need to define leadership not as perfection but as intelligence, honesty and doing the right thing. It is also essential that we question and change a society that sets the standard for achievement impossibly high for women and upsettingly low for men.

I find it a bit problematic that this young woman appears to confuse leadership with political power, a very specific type of leadership. At age 19, she is a published author and the founder of The FBomb.org, which describes itself as "a blog/community created by and for teenage girls who care about their rights as women and want to be heard." In other words, she already is a leader.  White women are the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action when considering management positions in the U.S. and it is difficult to believe that this trend will reverse in the coming decades. 

Nonetheless I find her link between the acquisition of perceived physical perfection and perfect life balance with the acquisition of leadership relevant. Additionally, I agree with the premise that the role of media in sending harmful messages to girls cannot be understated. I highly recommend you go to Forbes to read the full article.

The Not So Glamourous Life of a Working Mom

"You wear a lot of hats at your house" observes a co-worker. Indeed I do.

That is how I end up, several mornings per week, sitting topless and cross legged on the floor of my bathroom in front of a mirror after a shower, with a baby cradled in my lap, my knees supporting him as he nurses at 5:30 in the morning because gawd forbid the child should sleep more than 15 minutes in the morning without my warm body by his side, my hands occupied with a hairbrush and eyeliner.

I sometimes feel like I live in the Land of Too Much and Not Enough.

Not Enough sleep.... is what I'm getting.

Not Enough milk... is what I'm pumping at work.

Not Enough time... is what I have for each child one-on-one.

Not Enough attention... is what I am giving to my relationship with my husband.

Too Much mess and clutter... is all over my home.

Too Much stress... is what I feel.

Too Much pressure... is what I am under.

"We need lots and lots of Shanas" SchmoopyBoy tells me. When your three-year old thinks you need to clone yourself, you know you're in trouble.

I can't complain because, ultimately this is the life I chose (sort of). Just sayin'... sometimes I'm just hanging on by a very thin thread...

Gratuitous Fluffy Post about Nonsense

I hadn't bought new shoes in over two years. For real. My nice work shoes were looking... well, not so nice. So, I'm so excited about these I had to post a picture.

Oooooh, shiny.

I felt so snazzy I even put on lipstick when I left the house.

sigh, I am such a girl sometimes. If this keeps up I could lose my crunchy street cred.

Defining Womanhood

Be honest: are you consciously writing your own definition for womanhood, or are you using a definition that was written for you? And what tangible item most defines what you do or don’t want to become? ~Melissa Ford

This post has taken me over a week to finish because, you know, time and sleep-deprivation-induced brain power are limited these days, but nonetheless I thought it was still worth posting once I finally completed it.

Mel at Stirrup Queens wrote this fantastic article about who defines womanhood in the context of reviewing the movie The Iron Lady. The Iron Lady is about Margaret Thatcher (hmm, this is the second time Margaret Thatcher has come up in a post that fascinated me in a week, is the universe trying to tell me something?)

A few paragraphs worth quoting:

At its heart, the movie is dually about men’s inability to separate women from the adjectives they use to describe women, and the fact that WOMEN can’t separate themselves from the adjectives others use to describe women. That we allow others to define what it means to be a woman, and we go by a long-established, patriarchal definition for womanhood. Yes, we are sometimes conscious of that fact and rail against it, but just as often, men still have expectations and assumptions (popular ones: all women want children, women want to get married, women know nothing about sports) that they then tweak when they get to know the actual person, and women question themselves (even if it’s just in passing) if they don’t fit into these preconceived notions about women.

Furthermore,

...all will walk out of theater wondering if... we are allowing the traditional definition of womanhood to guide our decisions, or if we are eschewing the expectations the world has for women and making our own choices. Are we marrying because we want to or because it’s the next logical step? Same with family building? Same with career choices? Margaret Thatcher is just the receptacle for holding all these enormous ideas.

And moreover, when we write the definition for ourselves and state emphatically in our hearts what we do or don’t want to become, are we staying strong and following our dreams, or are we being sidetracked by self-doubt when others voice their opinions on our choices? How can we tune out the judgment; which when we boil down judgment to its essence is simply other people trying to define our lives for us, to write the dictionary of our selves.

I am a mother. Furthermore, I am a crunchy, attachment-parenting-leaning type mother. I am also the primary income earner in my family, and I work in a male dominated field. As such, I am constantly negotiating and renegotiating gender roles and expectations. My own expectations, my parter's expectations, my co-workers expectations, even my own mother's expectations. These expectations are based on traditional definitions of womanhood and the role of women in the domestic sphere.

My negotiations have not always been pretty. What I'm about to admit will probably piss off everyone - stay-at-home moms and hard core feminists equally. But, it does illustrate the conflict I've struggled with along my journey.

When I was pregnant with SchmoopyBoy, my mother told me with great certainty that I would be quitting my job to stay at home with my child because I "wouldn't want some stranger" to raise my child. Of course the idea that my husband, my child's other parent could possibly stay at home wasn't an option even considered because of her preconceived notions of the male gender role as bread-winners and bumbling incompetents with babies. At the time, rather than engage her in dialogue, I reacted angrily and sputtered that there was no way I was going to give up my education and career to be "some man's scullery maid". Yep, that's right people. Not my proudest moment. How many -isms are implied in that statement? I don't even want to go there now. I am so ashamed I ever used that comparison.

My world got turned upside down once SchmoopyBoy was born. I cried every day for two weeks before my maternity leave ended and it was time to leave my baby and return to the office. Once I returned to work, I judged SchmoopyBoy's development. Every time I observed something that didn't meet with my pre-determined (and completely cluelessly unrealistic) expectations, I blamed my husband. Clearly, I thought, if I were the one at home full time everything about my child would be perfectly in tune with what the books said should happen. After all, I am the mother, no one could possibly know how to do things better than me. When SchmoopyBoy's sleep habits fell apart at about 4 months of age (which is completely normal and common by the way - they don't call it the 4-month wakeful period/ 4-month sleep regression for nothing) I once angrily blurted out "Why don't you be a real man and get a real job so I can stay with him". Yep, that's right people. Another not-so-proud moment.

Traditional definition of (white middle class) womanhood - FAIL.

Feminist definition of (white middle class) womanhood - FAIL.

When it comes to black and white definitions of womanhood, I fail. I end up bouncing back and forth between extremes like a ping pong ball being swatted across a table in a game of Gender Role Dichotomy Table Tennis. I cannot and would not be willing to live like a 1950's housewife, taking 100% of the child care responsibilities and cleaning up after my husband as he lazily sips a frosty beverage at the end of his oh-so-hard-boo-hoo-for-you day. Nor can I be a female version of a 1950's father going off to work and coming home expecting my house to be neat and dinner prepared by my husband who would then of course taken on the role of 1950's househusband. While I do think that redefining manhood is a necessary component in redefining womanhood, trading traditional gender roles is not redefining womanhood or manhood, and is not my idea of what feminism is about.

Defining womanhood for me has involved embracing a traditional definition as nurturing mother, because to some extent I find that role with my children to be very natural. But it also has embraced non-traditional definitions because I find that I am indeed ambitious when it comes to my career, and I find tremendous satisfaction and experience greater mental health and self worth in the professional realm. I do struggle with balancing the domestic and professional aspects of my life, and frequently beat myself up for not performing either role to the best extent that I believe I can and should, but finding balance in life is rarely easy for anyone. So, to answer Mel's question, which I printed at the top of this post, I am creating a definition of womanhood that draws from definitions that have been previously written. That definition continues to evolve as I travel this life's journey.

Trial Run Successful

Late last week we did a trial run, in which I left the husband in charge of both children for 2 hours while I got a hair cut and attempted to run a couple of errands. As luck would have it, the baby slept for an hour and 15 minutes (I put him to sleep just before I left), so he only had to deal with both kids for 45 minutes. The main thing is that he took the bottle, which we both suspected he would. whew.

With SchmoopyBoy, we had to work with him for two weeks before he would take a bottle from his dad upon first offering. He waited until the last moment - the day before I went back to work was the first day he would finally take it. I was so relieved I almost cried.

Lil' Schmoo is a whole different beast. He takes the pacifier on occasion, which SchmoopyBoy never did, and didn't hesitate with the bottle. Considering our first (and only) trial run was less than a week before my first day back at work, I am relieved it went well. I have to confess, I would have loved another trial run. Just one hour of time all to myself would be like a mini-vacation. Plus I could get things done that are difficult (for me) to do with a baby in tow.

On the really unfortunate side, Lil' Schmoo caught another cold. I. Know. This time I believe he caught it from his father, who was really sick about a week ago. I'm trying to keep SchmoopyBoy and myself well. What craptastic timing. Tomorrow is my last day as a stay at home mom. Wow. Time really flies.

Next Week

I return to work after over 3 months on maternity leave. I can't believe it's been 3 months already. I'm not ready to leave my baby. He's not ready to be left. The husband isn't ready to take on 2 kids full time.

Everything will be fine, I know. It's just the build up to the inevitable that leaves me feeling such dread.

You know what is totally wacky? In this country, I am so damn privileged to be able to take a whole 3 months off. Thank you, FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act). Plus I have worked for my organization long enough to have built up a stock pile of paid leave so that all three months were paid. I'll be going back with no paid leave remaining, so it will be a month before I can take even one paid sick day, but I'm darn fortunate to have what I have.

So I have no excuse to whine about how I really wish I were living in Canada right now. Or pretty much anywhere else in the developed world. :-f

Today's thought on work-life balance

As I write and post this, I am in Phoenix, Arizona. I am not on a family vacation, but on an overnight business trip. My second since SchmoopyBoy’s birth, and my second in just the past 4 months.

I have mixed thoughts on overnight work travel. On one hand, I used to do a lot of overnight business trips before SchmoopyBoy was born. I work in a field and for an organization where travel is pretty much necessary for certain projects and programs. The fact that I haven’t traveled in 3 years has meant that I don’t get assigned to a lot of the most interesting projects, and it has compromised the advancement of my career. Seeing as I am the primary income earner in my family, this could have real implications for my family’s future. Plus, (yes, let’s go there, shall we?) you don’t see many fathers compromising their future career growth once they have children in order to spend more time at home with their young children.

On the other hand, at this stage of his life, my child needs me. He needs me, Mommy. I started preparing him a few days before my departure. I told him about how he was going to have special daddy time and I wouldn’t be here for one night to put him to sleep. He was not happy. He is, now, not happy with me. Every time I have called since I departed he hasn’t wanted to talk to me. Not because he’s having so much fun that he can’t drag himself away (although when he was visiting and playing with cousins yesterday afternoon that was certainly a good portion of it). He hasn’t wanted to talk to me because he is upset with me for leaving him and he is giving me the cold shoulder. So, I will have quite a bit of reconnection to do when I get back into town.

What complicates things for me even more is my own ambivalence. This business trip, like my previous business trip in May, has been almost like a mini vacation. I’ve gone out to dinner with other adults and had adult conversations for 1-2 hours. I haven’t had to think about what my picky toddler will be willing to eat. I haven’t had to worry about entertaining a young child at the table with books or toys. I haven’t had to get up from the table, interrupting my conversation, to take him for a walk outside when he gets restless so he doesn’t disturb the other customers. I went back to the hotel last night and watched television – things I never watch anymore like CSI and a PBS documentary. I cannot tell a lie. I’ve been selfishly enjoying being away for a night.

But I’ve also missed my little SchmoopyBoy. Each time I call and he pouts that he doesn’t want to talk to me in his ‘upset voice’ it breaks my heart. It makes me want to run home as quickly as I can and pull him onto my lap and hold him tightly, smothering him with kisses so he knows that no one and nothing is more important to me than him.

Balance. It’s hard. It’s complicated.

Oh, the irony

How is it that the one person in my office that has had 2 miscarriages this year ended up being the person to plan a baby shower for another woman in the office?

You see, it goes like this. The department Chief is sitting next to me at a meeting. The meeting is pretty much over but people are lingering and chit chatting. He turns directly to me and says "So is anything being planned for A? When is the baby shower going to be?" or something very similar to the effect, when in fact he actually means "I think you should organize a baby shower for A."

Before anyone goes off on "the audacity!" of the division chief, let me just say up front that this was not a completely unreasonable request.

First, and probably most relevantly, I am the last person in the office that birthed a baby and received an office baby shower. It seems appropriate that the last person to receive a shower should be the one organizing the next one. Based on a comment from another co-worker in the office, this may be a tradition in the office that I had not been aware of due to my relatively short tenure here, and the low number of baby-producing people in the office (most people in the office either have older children, or are single and not presently looking to have children).

Secondly, it's not like I advertise the fact that I'm experiencing struggles with fertility. Until very recently, there were only two people that even knew about my miscarriages. One of them was my boss, who I needed to tell because of the time I needed to take off from work to get all those darn blood tests. The other was a woman in another group with whom I had bonded over our mutually crunchy birthing and parenting styles. So, my division chief was not intentionally trying to be insensitive.

Still...Ouch. Yes, of course I'm happy to help... but Ouch.

I have to confess, I very well may have volunteered to help out with the planning even if I hadn't been asked. Because, you see, this woman and I have something shared - the common thread of infertility has touched us both. When I announced my pregnancy with SchmoopyBoy, she had been trying to conceive for 6 months. Now, three years later, after a costly failed IVF attempt and an attempt to adopt through the local foster-to-adopt program (the child she housed and fell in love with was ultimately placed with his biological father), now she is birthing a child of her own. I am truly so happy for her.

Throughout her pregnancy she has been positively beaming with happiness. I will admit it was hard to be around during the worst of my most recent loss. Trigger after trigger would leave me staring blankly behind my desk, struggling to function. But then I think to myself, how many times must I have unwittingly triggered her? When I was waddling around the office as big as a house, was I merely a reminder to her of what seemed out of reach? I wonder now how many times I carelessly and insensitively talked about my young child in her presence, perhaps complaining about lack of sleep, all without a second thought as to how she might have been triggered into sadness or envy or hopelessness or frustration.

Oh, the irony now that the tables are turned.

She never expressed a single negative thought towards me. She attended my office baby shower. She smiled at my stories. She absolutely deserves no less from me. This office baby shower is not about me or my struggles. It is about her achieving parenthood after a long and challenging journey. It is about celebrating her new daughter and her role as birthing mother.

I am not being facetious when I say that I am truly happy for her, and that I was glad to help with her shower. All I'm saying is...

Oh, the irony.

Sometimes my job is too cool

Most of the time I sit in front of a computer. Occasionally I sit in meetings with various stakeholders and other big wigs. And on a very rare occurrence, I get to see stuff like this.



This is Parker Dam, which creates Lake Havasu, the last major storage reservoir on the Colorado River. Here is the view looking downstream of the dam.


It was a gorgeous day - a perfect day for being on the river. However, the coolest thing was not even being at the river by the dam. It was this:


This is me, in full nerd regalia, inside one the four penstocks. Allow me to repeat myself. I am INSIDE A PENSTOCK! The place where I am standing is about 20 feet in diameter and is usually filled with water moving at about 5 feet per second. When the water moves through the penstock, it spins this turbine:



I may be a serious nerd, but seriously, how many times in my career am I going to get the opportunity to stand inside a penstock and look at a turbine that up close and personal? Pretty darn cool if you ask me.

Happiness and Parenting

When I read the New York Magazine article All Joy and No Fun – Why Parents Hate Parenting, I really meant to write something about it. The article sites research that concludes that, although most people assume that having children will make them happier, in fact parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so.

I noted with little irony that, on the day I read the article, later that evening John and I got into a long draining argument on… parenting, and how to address an issue that has arisen with SchmoopyBoy’s behavior. This was the exact kind of episode that was cited as one factor contributing to parental unhappiness (see page 4 of the online article).

Anyway, as usual, I never found time to write anything coherent about the article. (Too busy with work and parenting, not having enough time to myself - more cited factors contributing to parental unhappiness. No irony there.)

Fortunately, Annie at PhD in Parenting has once again hit the nail on the head with her article Grin and bear it? Parenting, happiness, and the pressure cooker. So, I can just refer you to her article, which I definitely recommend you read in full. She writes:

Before I had children, I was happy. I was in a great relationship. I had great friends. I was involved in enjoyable activities. I went on great vacations. I had a rewarding (but sometimes stressful) job. When we decided to have children, it was because we wanted to and it felt like the time was right. We did it because we had a desire to be parents, not because we were unhappy or trying to fill a void in our lives. I think that people who have children as a “solution” to their own unhappiness are likely to be sorely disappointed.

Ah, yes, children as void fillers. Parenthood as a solution to unhappiness. Who doesn’t know someone who has expressed the idea that “If I only could get X, then I would be happy”, “If I only achieved Y then I would be happy”. If I lost 20 pounds... if I had a boyfriend… if I had a new car… if I won the lottery… if I had a child… then I would be happy.

I myself am guilty. Not with parenting per se, but certainly with other things. I insisted we get a dog because I was unsatisfied with my social community and thought it would be an outlet that would contribute to my happiness – I may not have had the human companionship I craved, but canine companionship I thought would fill the void. Of course I was wrong.

Like Annie, before I had children I was reasonably happy. I was in a great relationship. I had a rewarding job. I had financial security. I had dear friends that I love, even if they did live in another state. When we decided to have children, we also did so because we wanted to and felt the time was right. I will fully admit that I went into parenthood with an unbelievable amount of naivety, and with totally unrealistic expectations of what new motherhood would be like, and for that I suffered. Nonetheless, I don’t believe I ever went into motherhood thinking that I would necessarily be more happy. I knew I would be making sacrifices on my personal freedom, but I was ready to make those sacrifices. I was ready to be less self-centered and live for someone other than myself. I knew there would be a loss of day-to-day pleasure, and I was ok with that.

Annie continues:

I am a complex person. There isn’t one person or a group of people that are responsible for my happiness (or my unhappiness). I think that is a lot of responsibility and also pressure to place on the shoulders of someone else. I am responsible for my happiness and I am responsible for telling others that impact my happiness what I need. I don’t think that having children makes you happy and I don’t think that not having children makes you happy. Children, certainly, can contribute to or take away from the things that make you happy. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that most children will do both, regularly…

to which I say AMEN and HALLELUJAH. Yes, I am responsible for my own happiness. I tend to believe that happiness is a quality that we generate within ourselves, rather than something created by "things" external to ourselves. I tend to think it comes first and foremost from (1) self acceptance and liking who we are despite our imperfections, and (2) meeting our basic needs.

I think that a lot of people confuse pleasure with happiness. However, I can think of plenty of things that I have found pleasurable but did not contribute to my happiness, rather quite the contrary (sex and drugs and rock and roll, anyone?). I can also think of a number of things that I do not necessarily find pleasurable that do contribute to my overall sense of happiness (I would not always describe my job as pleasurable per se, but I enjoy it because it is challenging and rewarding and being good at something I care about contributes to my sense of self esteem and self worth).

In my experience, parenting has been both pleasurable and not so pleasurable. I have only been a parent for 2 years, but my limited experience so far has been rewarding and I do not regret becoming a parent in any way whatsoever. I will say that I am glad I waited until my mid-thirties to become a mother, because I don’t know that my previous statement would hold if I had jumped into motherhood before I was mentally and emotionally ready. I will also say that being a WOHM (work outside of the house mom) has been critical for my happiness. I believe I am a better mother because I work outside of the home, but getting into why that is the case is an extensive topic for another post.

So in conclusion, I think it is important that we take responsibility for our own happiness. If there is a lack of happiness, we should look inward to figure out why – what is the NEED that is lacking? Is it social community and support? Is it physical and financial security? Is it dealing with a long past hurt that has never been properly addressed, perhaps due to an injustice, betrayal, or act of violence? If we can realize what our needs are that are being unmet, and take steps to meet them, I think we can improve our happiness and overall quality of life, whether with or without children.

Oh where, oh where has my confidence gone? Oh where, oh where can it be?

I went to a meeting with some very big wigs yesterday. Very Big Wigs. And I spoke. Out loud. Once. To clarify some background information that was important for the Very Big Wig to understand. And as I was speaking, I know my face went red because I could feel myself getting hotter and hotter, like my face was about to burst into flames.

Why?!?!

Why should I be so intimidated by a bunch of Fancy Titles? I am a technical expert in my field. That's why I was invited to this meeting to begin with. I should be able to confidently speak to my expertise, regardless of my audience.

Is it just my social anxiety? My general discomfort with public speaking? Do I genuinely lack confidence? Am I so easily intimidated by rank and title?

I don't really have time to explore in depth the inner workings of my brain right now. But I need to make a mental note to revisit this incident and figure out what's going on inside my noggin so I can get over whatever causes me to turn into a bumbling tomato whenever I open my mouth at an important meeting.