Someday, I'm going to write my own book about being a nursing mom going back to work. It will probably have a specific section on the school environment. Every book I've read so far on the subject has had really good advice about maintaining a connection with your baby, the benefits of adequate hydration, and pumping tips. They recommend sleeping with your baby so that you maintain enough physical contact with her even though you're gone all day so that your supply doesn't drop off. (They don’t mention that this means "sleeping through the night" is still a long way off…) They tell you to get relaxed, find a quiet place, free from distractions and focus on your baby to help with the let down response. Which is great to get you started and all, but what happens when you're in the trenches, so to speak, and difficulties arise? Wouldn't you like some advanced warning of pitfalls to avoid? I had a few particularly trying weeks leading up to Spring Break. Can you tell? As you may know, I have my little nook at school that I use as my pumping room. It is a "room" that goes by many names: 4th grade storage closet, elevator room, special ed testing room, physical therapy overflow room, and the list goes on. It has bins of books, a silver insulated conduit, the door for the elevator, and no lock on the exterior door. Needless to say, I am not the sole user of said closet. It has become a well known fact that before school, sometime between 9:35-10:45, late lunchtime, and right after school are the times when I will be occupying this room. 3 out of the 4 do not cause a problem. The mid-morning pump is the culprit because it changes depending on the day of the week. I can't just leave to pump whenever I feel like it. I have to wait until my kids are gone to a special like music or gym. Wednesday is the day we have our IEP meetings and is also a day that there is an extra sub in the building so that our special ed teachers can attend the meetings or get testing of kids done. Unfortunately my little room is the only available space Wednesday morning to use for that testing. Now I have all of the special ed dept interested in when I'll be pumping. When they say a nursing mom loses all modesty, it is true in so many more ways than you can imagine.
ISATs were particularly fun. Not only was I stressed, but my schedule was all shifted around. One morning I went to pump, only to discover that the special ed teacher was giving a make-up ISAT in the hallway right outside my little room! Here is a glimpse at my inner monologue…"Well crap! My pump is being held hostage! I can't go back there while he's working on his ISAT, especially if they finally got him to work on it…And he gets extended time! Double crap! When did they start? I can wait until 10:30 and still have enough time to knock this out before my kids come back from art at 10:45…." Luckily as I was sneaking in at 10:30 to surreptitiously snatch my pump and find some other closet to hide in, they were just finishing. So I was able to use my little room. I quickly got set up and down to business when on the other side of my door, yes the one that doesn't lock, I heard our school psychologist say "I think we'll be ok working back here…" ACK! Now I have a former student doing his IEP update testing right outside my door! AND he's ADHD so I really don’t want to distract him. The last thing I want to hear is "Hey Mrs. Moore! What's that?" I'm trapped!!! Luckily I summoned all of my ninja skills and waited by the door until I heard him end a subtest with "I don't know that one," and slid silently behind him and through a side door into my room. He never even knew I was there! Whew!
That same afternoon I was back there after school and was in the middle of pumping when I heard my name being literally screamed in my classroom. Now when a child screams my name, I go running in crisis mode. I literally take off the cones, drip all over my pants, pull up one shirt, pull down the other, and run back into my classroom to find the 5 year old little brother of one of my students who had been out sick and his mother. They wanted to pick up his homework. Yeah, that was worth screaming…I don’t think that she caught what was happening, but she wanted to stop and chat and I was very short with her since I was still leaking.
And then there are the other times when you just throw your hands in the air and say "I guess it's just not going to happen today!" like the day of our practice lockdown with the police. I was just sitting down to get started, when I hear "We are in lockdown!" come over the intercom. SO I quickly put myself back together and duck into the nearest room, which happens to the social worker's room, only slightly larger than my pumping closet. Since there are windows in the door, she and I and the three first graders she was meeting with had to huddle in her "closet" (read: room with just enough space to lock up her file cabinet). Did I mention that this was the group who does not know how to stop talking? Literally, that's why they see her. Trying keep them quiet was quite the challenge. The ridiculousness of the situation was not lost on me. More recently my principal has begun to tell me when the top-secret fire drills are going to be happening, so I don't get caught unawares.
I spend a little over an hour of my time at school in this little utility room trying to relax and make enough milk to get Keira through her next day while simultaneously worrying that it's not going to be enough. She is growing so fast and wanting more and more and I just can't keep up! I had always heard that nursing was hard for a lot of women for physical reasons and that I get because it wasn't easy for us to get started either. Luckily we managed it, but I had no idea how hard it was going to be to maintain it once I went back to work. Honestly, if my day-care provider and principal were not both former La Leche League group leaders who have cheerfully encouraged me and helped me figure everything out, I doubt I would have made it this long. The experts are recommending a full year of breast-feeding, but I am not surprised that many do not make it to that point if they are not stay at home moms. I often wonder if this is going to be the week where I just can't get it all done.
