Things I Wish I Knew

It has been months since I've had time to post. Working full time and taking care of a baby is hard! I have a lot of thoughts about the whole issue but I always have them when I don't have time or desire to put them down. Thus I find myself typing this during the last ten mintues of work, while I sit at my desk and pump.

Sitting at my desk and pumping is NOT FUN. Pumping while working in general is a nightmare. It's very hard to find two consistent opportunities throughout the day, let alone in private. I have found myself pumping in front of my boss, my coworkers, my MALE coworkers at times, and currently right at this moment in front of one of my female employees. Thankfully she is across the room and I am not exposed in any way. I have also been walked in on by various people on many occasions. Throughout all this, during the past 5 months or so of doing this, I have only managed to forget my pump once and my flanges twice. One of those two times was today. So I sit here pumping one side at a time, with the spare flange that I bought last time I forgot my flanges, to keep in the office for just such occasions.

Pumping one side at a time brings me full cirlce to the topic of this post. When I first started pumping I was doing one breast at a time, for like an hour every night. What!?? I even have a double pump. I was doing one at a time because I didn't want to hold both flanges at once. Eventually before going back to work I bought some stupid Pumping Pal contraption that hangs around your neck to hold the flanges up. Not comfortable, not convenient to carry around. Finally one of my friends found out about this craziness and .... DUH.... PUMPING BRA! Hands free! Two at a time! Can't live without it, especially now that I pump four f$%*& times a day!!!

Another thing that I slap myself in the head about: dish washer basket. For MONTHS AND MONTHS I was washing nipples and odd bottle parts by hand. It never even occurred to me to buy a contraption to use in the dish washer. Dish washer baskets are cheap and fit many nipples, spoons, tiny little lids, etc. Now the only things I wash by hand are lids, because they take up too much space and fit together in such a way that they don't all get clean. I still absolutely hate the whole bottle washing process, what with all of the parts to each fancy bottle. On average my bottles all have five or more parts: Born Free for example have lids, nipples, a two piece vent system, and the bottle itself. However the baskets really do help. One Step Ahead is a great catalog and they have these little mesh bag type things that fit a lot of various parts, pacis, etc.

And now it's 4:02 and I'm out of time!