Pump it up

For the amount of effort I put into dreading going back to work, it hasn't been that bad. The first day was hard, I missed baby girl so much it almost hurt. And getting out the door was made even more difficult than expected because, number 1, my car's battery was completely dead, and number 2, my kindergartener was sick and not going to school.

Once I got to work, I also obsessed over how much the nanny was feeding my baby. It seemed like way too much. This paranoia was only intensified by the email I received from my husband at 3:15 PM saying that the baby had thrown up all over the sick, staying-at-home kindergartener. The baby spooge was so volumous, so much of it in her hair, and on her arm and shirt, that she had to strip down and get in the shower to be free of it.

But regardless of the obstacles we made it through day one, and two, and workday number three is now at an end as well. It is getting easier, but there's one thing about being back to work, with a baby at home, that is not easy, or fun, and that I'll probably never get used to.

I have to "express" milk while here in the office.

I've not done this before. It's new to me. And loathsome. It's disruptive, and messy, and most of all painful.

And there's a ton of gear associated with it too. Gear that's, well, let's face it, a bit creepy.

Take for instance this benign looking backpack:


This is no ordinary black backpack. No.

This backpack breaks down into this 2-gunned machine:


And the small, black, insulated cooler that I now have to tow back and forth to work with me does not contain a chilled, renegade beer or yummy lunch. No.

It contains all sorts of bottles and specimen containers and the like. Look at my desk; I can hardly get to the medical dictionary any more!



But the most outlandish gear of all, is the "hands free" pumping bra that I use to express myself.

(NOTE: This is NOT me. And there is no way this woman is really pumping, or still lactating, even. C'mon, she's skinny with no boobs.)

So here I sit, in my office, twice a day, looking like some crazy La Leche League warrior. Hooked up to a machine that makes repetitive pumping noises that never fail to sound like phrases, such as, "black hole," "hell of a blip," and "pull it back." (What do you mean?? I want to scream.)

But I don't, of course, because all that separates me from my coworkers, and the rest of the world, really, is a cheap, faux wood door.

So I've taped Daisy to my office door, just to remind the folks here that I'm busy; I'm busy in a I-don't-have-my-shirt-on, La Leche League warrior princess, so-don't-be-knocking kind of way.