Pumping in the girl's room

Last Wednesday was the first time since he was born that I was away from lil a all day. Eno stayed home and, along with his little brother, took care of the babe. Since I was gone all day, I had to pump. [Warning if talk of breast pumps, milk and fashionable shoes makes you squeamish, stop reading now.]

I already had all the gear I need -- I bought the Medela Pump in Style a long time ago. I've used it at home to build up my stash and in the car while traveling to Idaho, but never in a public place and especially never while I was with work people, most of whom are 60-year-old men.

The meetings I went to took place at the brand-new Salem Conference Center. I emailed them earlier this week to see if they had any facilities for nursing moms. Unfortunately, the most they could offer me was a chair in the women's bathroom or the use of one of their administrative conference rooms. I could only imagine the strange look I would get if someone walked in on me in their conference room, so I decided to just plan on using the women's restroom (sans extra chair).

At around 10 am, I decided it was probably time to do the deed, so I marched off the bathroom with my "laptop" (People actually thought this was a laptop..thank god I work in IT).

Here's where the fancy shoes come in. I wore very distinctive, stylish shoes (if I do say so myself), and people kept commenting how cute they are. Normally that would be great, but when you have to stand in a bathroom stall for 15 minutes with a very strange whirring sound emitting from said stall, let me tell you, you'd much rather be wearing nondescript, unidentifiable shoes. Not to mention since you can't sit down, heels would probably not be your first choice.

The best part was that once I got setup and the pump started going, anytime I moved from side to side, the toilet would flush. As if it's not enough to have the pump sound going...intermittent flushing just topped it all off.

All in all, everything went fine. I had to pump 3 times throughout the day and I pumped basically the same amount as lil a ate while I was gone, so my stash wasn't depleted. While a bathroom isn't the best place for food prep, it worked well enough and I made it through the day.