It is possible to still exclusively breastfeed your baby while working from home. However there are certain challenges involved such as time inflexibility that you need to overcome.
Nonetheless it is manageable and achievable to manage to work from home and also breastfeed your child. Some tips includes nursing on schedule, bottle feeding, block timing and multitasking between work and breast feeding.
How to Breastfeed Exclusively when Working from Home
1.Nurse/Breastfeed on Schedule
As a mom working from home, you need to understand that breastfeeding your baby on demand will be harder to manage while still working. This is because your baby will demand to feed while you are engaged in critical work tasks.
As such you should train your child to feed on schedule rather than on-demand. However,it is easier for older babies over 4 months old than it is for younger toddlers. Doing so will make it easy for you to exclusively breastfeed when you are working from home.
An effective working mom breastfeeding schedule is one scheduled or aligned along your work so that you work when the time your baby is not feeding and vice versa.
This way your nursing time does not need to crash with work. As such you can easily meet your work targets and breastfeeding needs of your baby at the end of the day.
Read: How to Manage Working from Home with a Baby
2. Adopt Bottle-Feeding
You should consider bottle feeding as one way to make working from home and breastfeeding exclusively possible and easy for you. It is important if you want your baby to still feed under demand but you are engaged in critical work tasks. You just need to pump your breast milk when you are free and feed the baby from the bottle.
Pumping gives you the option of availing breast milk for your baby to feed from as you are working. It is hence important to ensure you have an adequate supply of milk to allow you the flexibility of you need for working remotely and keeping your baby exclusively fed.
Bottle feeding your baby is especially easy when you have some one else helping you out in looking after the baby. Therefore, you need to have a child care plan whereby someone else like a nanny or partner is helping with feeding and caring for the baby while you continue working.
By doing so you will easily balance feeding and working. You only need to pump your breast milk and keep it ready for when the baby needs. Fortunately pumping is something you can do during off work hours such as in the morning or evening to ensure it does not interfere with your work.
Read: How Make it Possible Working from Home with a Nanny
3. Multitask between Work & Breastfeeding
One of the breastfeeding challenges for mom working from home is how to work and exclusively breastfeed their babies at the same time. Even if your baby is breast feeding on demand, you can be able to manage work and breastfeeding your baby if you multi-task the two.
Fortunately, you can do breastfeed hands off so that you can multitask with other work. To work and breastfeed at the same time you just need a comfortable nursing chair. This way you can have your hands free for other tasks.
However this option is only possible for smaller babies as they are less jumpy. You still need to maintain the right posture for breastfeeding too so you can only do certain tasks that allow you to stay in this position.
Some tasks you can complete include reading and replying to your emails on your phone while breastfeeding. You still till need to watch the baby while he/she feeds so allocate time for other focused tasks when you are not nursing the baby instead.
Read: Tips on Helping Moms Succeed at Working from Home
4. Block Time on your Work Calendar
Another effective way you can manage to working from home and breastfeed your child is by blocking your calendar. Blocking your work calendar form some time to breastfeed the baby will make both tasks manageable.You can then nurse your baby adequately without work pressures.
If your employer allows it, you can nurse your baby even he/she feeds on demand by blocking off your calendar. The option is only possible for some work streams and work types when you are mostly a lone worker rather than part of a team. The nature of some jobs doesn’t allow workers to choose work hours even when working from home.
Read: How to Set and Enforce Work Boundaries
5. Use Nursing/Lactating Break Allocations
Your company and also the nature of your work will determine if getting breaks to breast feed is possible. If you work for a mom-friendly company/employer, you should be entitled to some nursing time. You are still entitled to the same privilege such as pumping time as when you are working from home.
Read: How to Avoid Breast Milk Leaks
Guide for Moms Working from Home on Breastfeeding
- Invest in a Good Nursing Chair and Support Pillow. It will keep you comfortable when nursing so that you can multitask on other tasks.
- Pre-plan Everything– Pump milk off-work hours, and plan ahead for the day’s work tasks. Having a solid plan laid out helps you avoid wasting time or procrastinating and have adequate time for both work and nursing your baby.
- Hibernate from Work when Possible. Turn off camera during meetings if nursing. When possible work behind the scenes to allow you to multitask and breast feed your child as you work.
- Practice a Hybrid Feeding Approach. Breastfeed when you can and bottle feed when you cannot . Doing a mixture of these approaches allows you the flexibility of working when necessary and breastfeeding when possible.
- Practice Moderate Adjustments. Start out moderately with remote working and breastfeeding. If possible do part-time work and later go full time remote work to help in adjusting to the new routine.
- Have a Reliable Child Care Plan. You need a nanny/partner/family helping you with caring for the baby. Such support is crucial to make work from home possible for moms who also want to breast feed.
Read: How to Dry your Breast Milk
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