It is the wish of every mother to give her infant child the best growth start. As proven and supported by numerous scientific studies, milk is the only best natural source of nourishment you can give your child. For this reason, all breastfeeding mothers are advised to exclusively breastfeed their children for at least six months before introducing any other food.
After that children should continue breastfeeding till they are at least two years. But how do you achieve giving your child uninterrupted breast milk if you are working?
Pumping milk at your workplace is the ideal solution. But it is heavily challenging for working women to pump breast milk at work to keep their infant babies on breast milk after their resume work from maternity leave. New pregnant women never realize how challenging pumping at work can be until your maternity leave is over and you have to resume working.
In addition to the guilt of leaving your infant child for work, you have to find solutions to major challenges such as lack of privacy for pumping, inadequate breaks to sustain the demand for the breast milk and unsupportive employers against pumping at the workplace among others.
In this post, I have compiled these major challenges and most importantly the different approaches you can use to make pumping breast milk at work easier. If you are soon resuming work or just resumed work, this post offers you key solutions to some problems you may be facing or might face. If you are an employer, you will find important information about how you can solve these challenges for your breastfeeding employees.
Necessities & Everything you Need for Pumping Breast Milk at Work
For you to express/pump breast milk at your workplace, you need the following items/facilities
- A breast pump – the first necessity for pumping
- Storage bags/containers- you need this for storing breast milk
- A private room, with a power outlet, water sink etc.- you need privacy for pumping
- Adequate breaks – you need time without rushing through the pumping
- A refrigerator- keeping your pumped milk fresh and safe is very important
- A supportive employer/colleagues-
Some workplaces have an adequately equipped lactation room to make it comfortable and easier for breastfeeding moms for pump breast milk. They so kindly provide some or all the above facilities to support the breastfeeding mothers who want to continue expressing milk at the workplace.
However, a majority of workplaces lack most of the above necessities, creating challenges for breastfeeding working women that you can overcome . Read further to know what you can do about this.
Simple Tips for Making Pumping Breast Milk Instantly Easier at Work
1. Find a Comfortable and Private Room
Lack of privacy is one of the biggest challenges that most breastfeeding mothers face trying to pump breast milk in the workplace. To effectively express milk, you need a quiet, private room free from invasions. While some workplaces do offer private lactation rooms others lack this crucial facility. As a result, the women resort to using cars, bathrooms, closets and shared offices to pump breast milk.
Talk to your employer about the importance of having this facility in the workplace. You may want to first find out if you have any legal backing for having your employer providing a lactation room for breastfeeding moms to pump milk in. Different countries and states have different legal provisions covering the basics needs for breastfeeding mothers in the workplace and its valuable to use this.
After this, your employer may be willing to put up a lactation room or offer you a private room for pumping. The room needs to be completely private, has a comfortable chair, a sink, and water as these are crucial necessities that you need to easily pump breast milk at work.
If this space is still not availed to you, look around for what other space you can use as alternative rooms for pumping breast milk in. You can pick your office, an isolated room or the workplace quiet room as their privacy makes pumping milk easier. If you cant lock the door or is still uneasy about invasions, place a ” DO NOT DISTURB “ sign on the door.
Read: Practical Breast Pumping Spots at Work
2. Invest in a Quality and Convenient Breast Pump To Make Pumping Easier
As obvious as it may seem, having the right kind of a breast pump is a challenge yet paramount for some women who resume work after delivery. It would be wrong to assume that all employers offer breast milk pumping equipment to breastfeeding women at the workplace. Also, it would be wrong to assume that all women own an electric pump for expressing breast milk.
As an alternative to the electric pump, some women use hands to manually express breast milk. The manual expression is quite tiring, time-consuming and ineffective in expressing enough milk.
A breast pump is one of those items that are an absolute necessity for you as a breastfeeding working mom. I recommend you do not compromise on this since it saves you so much time and trouble involved in pumping breast milk at work.
Take advantage of your maternity leave to look around and find a perfect breast milk within your budget. While some breast pumps are quite on the high end, there are still some quality electric pumps you can find that are low budget.
If you really must cut, then go for a manual pump instead of expressing milk using hands. A manual pump is not as effective as an electric one but is more effective and efficient than expressing milk with your hands. Having the right quality of breast milk will go along way into making pumping breast milk at work easier and convenient.
Read: How to Find a Pumping Spot at Work
3. Get Adequate Enough Breaks between Work for Pump
Even when a working mother is willing to continue pumping milk for her child, women still face the challenge of finding adequate time to pump at work. The recommended interval for a breastfeeding mom to express milk is about every three hours, which is about the same time the infant would have fed.
Further, you need about 30 minutes every session to express milk, clean your equipment and freshen up. Most working moms are denied such adequate breaks to allow for this routine. Depending on your workplace, you may have several options here.
Having this privilege largely depends on your workplace, the nature of your work and your supervisor/employer. Reasonably, most employers will be willing to allocate you more breaks to make your pumping adequate and easier. You however need to talk to your employer about your needs.
You may offer to split your one-hour lunch break into two interval breaks during the shift that will offer enough time to pump breast milk at work for the day. However if your circumstances or employer do not allow for frequent additional breaks, you can still make your normal routine work to your advantage and continue pumping breast milk at work.
For instance you can take advantage of the time before your shift in the morning and the time after your shift in the evening for pumping. Besides use your tea break, lunch break and evening break if available and allocate them for pumping breast milk.
The less frequently you pump, the less your milk production will become. Regular pumping also helps eliminate breast complications such as engorgement, leaking, and mastitis. Remember your determination and willingness to keep pumping will help you keep going.
Read: How to Get Some Me-Time at the Office for Pumping
4. Secure Convenient Milk Storage Options
Having a convenient and reliable storage is very important in making your expression breast milk at work easier. Doctors advise that breast milk be stored in a refrigerator or freezer immediately after expressing. This means a cold storage/freezer/refrigerator is necessary for you if are pumping at the workplace.
Some workplace lactation rooms have refrigerators while others just have general refrigerators used by all staff. These may be a ideal solution for you if there are few users in the office. For other working moms wishing to pump breast milk, it may not be appropriate because of the obvious storage limitation and the high risk of milk contamination.
Moving the expressed milk from the workplace back home is also an additional challenge, given the varying distances, means of transport and storage containers among others.
If your workplace does not have a lactation refrigerator, see if your employer is willing to provide one that is separate from other employees uses. If this is not possible, you need to make your own arrangements for both storing and transporting your expressed breast milk back home.
One of the most convenient options that is highly recommended is finding portable cold storage that will both store your milk cold and also facilitate moving it back home at the end of the day. This will more be convenient ,and safer way of making pumping breast milk at work easier for you. These options are readily available and you can check out at your local store.
5. Acquire the Support of your Employer
To have all the above facilities that makes pumping breast milk at work easier, you need a very supportive employer and colleagues. Truth be told, some employers may not support such provisions as they seem to take a huge expense on the company. Also, colleagues may make feel you guilty and embarrassed about pumping breast milk, further discriminating you.
Therefore you need a supportive environment and a strong work network to support you in this journey. Having this support is very crucial in making pumping breast milk at work easier and comfortable. Often it is the lack of knowledge that might create a lack of support and hence your first move is creating awareness about the importance of pumping breast milk at work.
Ask your employer to let you invite or organize for a workplace awareness campaign on breastfeeding support at the workplace. You can enlist the help of your nurse to educate the employer and employees about the benefits of breastfeeding and the need to support breastfeeding mothers at the workplace. Doing so will help and other breast feeding mums to continue pumping milk at work.
Additional Tips for Moms Pumping Breast Milk at Work
- Do not feel guilty about asking your employer to facilitate breast milk pumping at the workplace. Motherhood is a natural gift and nurturing your child is a nature’s duty. You do not need to feel guilty about it and your employer is obliged into making pumping breast milk easier for you.
- Do not feel embarrassed about pumping milk at your workplace. Breast milk is the best food that you can give your infant. You child needs are more important than what others will think of pumping milk at the workplace. Some may make you feel embarrassed but don’t dip for it as this will make your pumping journey at work easier.
- Start pumping milk three weeks before resuming work. This is the time while you are still on your maternity leave. It will assist you to have an easy pumping transition when you go back to work that will make sure your pumping routine is simple and consistent.
- Use a double breast pump to express milk at work. A full-size double pump is faster, more efficient and also the simultaneous bilateral pumping increases your levels of serum prolactin. Pumping breast milk at work is highly challenged by time and hence it crucial to be time efficient.
- Sit on a comfortable chair while pumping milk. It will allow the hind-milk to flow into your breast sinuses for pumping. It will also make the session comfortable for you.
- Keep the expressed milk in the refrigerator as soon as possible. Freeze the milk or use within 48 hours. Experts recommended that frozen milk can be kept up to 6 months. This is why you convenient storage options while pumping breast milk at work.
- Take care of your self physically, and emotionally. Keep yourself calm and composed. Remember if you are tense, your milk will not let down. It is a true secret for making your journey of pumping breast milk at work easier.
- Keep your motivation high. It is quite intensive to continue pumping at the workplace amidst the heavy challenges and discrimination you might face every day. Remind yourself every day the reasons why you are doing this and keep going on.
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