Birth of a blog

A long time ago, in a garage not so far away, Sarah and Meggan worked together. We lost touch for a number of years when Sarah moved for graduate school. Happily, we reconnected when Sarah moved back into the area last summer. Since then, we've been keeping in touch via email, sharing stories, advice, and supporting each other on our parallel journeys through pregnancy, new parenthood, the return to work, and pumping. One day while searching for a way to describe part of this dynamic process, Meggan coined the term pump-esteem and Sarah found it so descriptive that she knew it was just right. The idea for this blog followed soon after.

Sarah is a mom of a currently 4.5 month old little girl and Meggan has a 9 month old boy. Both of our little nurslings are exclusively breastfed or breastmilk-fed from bottles when mommies are at the office.

Sarah works on being a “marathon pumper”; she is fortunate enough to have her own office at work with a door that locks so she strives to pump four times per day with about 2.5 hours between sessions, although on some days it is only three. Though her company is fairly flexible in terms of working hours and leave, she still has to be in the office Monday through Friday. Sarah has a freezer stash of milk consisting of about 30 4-oz. bags and pumps mostly bottle to baby, striving to every two months use up the freezer stash and cycle in new milk so nothing goes “bad”. So far Sarah’s worries about production levels have not come to fruition, but she does let her pump run for extra time at the end of each pumping session and there is a bottle of fenugreek at home, just waiting to be called into action.

Meggan is less, um, enthusiastic, and describes her pumping style as "lazy" (not to be confused with lack of commitment). She works outside of the home four days a week (the fifth day she telecommutes), and has an office all to herself two days a week. Those days, she enjoys balancing the bottles on her knees, taking a break to check email and read blogs while she pumps at her desk. The other two days, she pumps in a conference room with a door that doesn't lock and a small sign on the other side that reads PLEASE Do Not (!) Enter. She is glad that so far her coworkers have been good about reading the sign. Meggan pumps twice a day at work, sometimes only once, depending on scheduling (and laziness). It’s easy for her to procrastinate, because she no longer feels "full" in between sessions. She pumps mostly bottle to baby, keeping about a day's worth of milk in the freezer at all times, and though she's made recent efforts to increase that amount, she never makes it past plus 1-2 bags before slipping back into her comfortable pumping pattern. Sarah is her pumping hero. : )