I said Monday I was wrecked. It's Friday, I have a glass of wine, and here's the actual reason.
Setup, so you can triage me properly. LO is 19 weeks. EBF. She nurses when I'm with her, morning, evening, and once MOTN, and I only pump at work. Spectra S1, 24mm flanges, four sessions a day: 8:30, 11:30, 2:00, 4:30, twenty minutes each.
Daycare sends home a bottle log, so I know the number exactly. She takes 11 oz across the day, three bottles, paced. So I need 11 oz.
Monday I brought home 9. Wednesday I brought home 8. Thursday, 7.5. And on Saturday, on my own couch, pumping once in the morning after she'd already nursed, I got 5 oz out of one sitting.
Five oz on my couch. Two in the closet. Same pump, same body, same week. I have maybe 40 oz in the freezer and I'm eating into it every single day. Two weeks, roughly, before this stops being a bad feeling and turns into a real problem.
Where it happens. There's a storage closet on the second floor. No window, one outlet behind a shelving unit, a box fan someone left in 2019, and a wall of toner cartridges and copy paper. No lock. I taped a piece of printer paper to the door that says PLEASE KNOCK - PUMPING, and on Tuesday a guy from facilities opened it anyway, at 11:40, while I was topless and attached to a machine, and said "oh, sorry." And then STOOD THERE for a beat like he was waiting for me to tell him it was fine.
I asked my manager Monday. He is not a bad guy. Somehow that's worse. He said this, and I wrote it down afterward because I wanted the exact words: "Yeah, of course, whatever you need. Can you try to line it up with your lunch, or before the 11 standup? I just don't want it to look like you're gone all the time."
Look like. To who. There is nobody counting except him, and now me.
I said milk doesn't run on the standup schedule and he laughed like I'd made a joke.
Then Thursday the closet was full of chairs for an all-hands, so I pumped in my car in the parking garage, level 3, hoodie over my chest, hazards on. And that's what made me cry. Not the guy walking in. The hazards. I was sitting in a Honda in a concrete garage making food for my daughter with my hazards on, like I'd broken down.
What I want to know from people who've done this:
Does the work number ever come back up, or is 2 oz just what work is now? Because if it's permanent I need to know while I still have a stash, not in two weeks when I don't.
And did anyone actually make their employer give them a real room? Or did you all do the closet for a year and let it go? I keep drafting an email to HR and deleting it. I can hear myself sounding difficult in my own head.
STM, so I should be better at this. First time around I was home. I nursed on the couch and never touched a pump in my life. Nobody warned me the hard part of baby two would be a door.
Gear answer, since nobody's given you one! Seven weeks into EP over here and an unreasonable amount of research, so take it for what it is.
Do not replace your Spectra with a wearable. Get a wearable as a SECOND pump and keep the S1 for real sessions. Everyone I know who went wearables-only watched their supply slide over about three weeks and then blamed themselves for it. Wearables don't empty you as well. That's the tradeoff, and the marketing does not mention it.
What they're for is exactly your Thursday. Chairs in the closet, all-hands, no room, no outlet. A wearable...
Mine's 8 months. I stopped pumping last month, so I'm about six weeks off the other side of exactly where you're standing, and you're getting the version I wish someone had given me at week one instead of the encouraging version.
Small nonprofit, 30 people. Under 50, so they waved the undue hardship flag at me, and I let them, because I didn't know it wasn't a magic word. It isn't. They still have to show real difficulty. Mine had a conference room they used twice a month!
I pumped in a bathroom for four months. Typing that plainly, because everyone says...
"Four months of humiliation, nine days of paperwork, and six weeks of a good room." I read that at 6am with her nursing in the dark and had to put the phone face down.
I sent the email. Ten minutes ago, Saturday night, before I could talk myself out of it. Three sentences, no apology, April 7 in it. My hands were shaking. Which is insane. It's an email about a door!
Also: 21mm this morning on the couch, video of her on my phone with the sound on. 5.5 oz and it didn't hurt. I did not know not hurting was...
IBCLC. Two problems here and they need pulling apart. The second one is fixable this week, and it's causing most of the first.
Output first. 5 oz on your couch and 2 in a closet with no lock is not a supply problem. You have supply. You proved it Saturday. It's a letdown problem. Your body will not let down while part of you is listening for the door. That isn't weakness and it isn't in your head. It's oxytocin, and adrenaline suppresses it. Same pump, same flange, same breasts, different room, half the milk. You already ran the experiment. The...
About 400 people. So no undue hardship escape hatch. I'm guessing that's why you asked.
I've been staring at "free from intrusion" for twenty minutes. I didn't know that was the actual wording. I thought it was a vibe. I thought the law said something soft and aspirational, like employers should try to accommodate, and my entire read of this week was that I was asking for a favor and had already used up my favor by having a baby.
Free from intrusion is not a favor. A man opened a door on me.
And no, I'm not looking at a photo of...
400 employees, so yes. No undue hardship claim available to them. That exemption is for under 50, and even then they have to demonstrate significant difficulty or expense, not just say the words out loud and have you accept them.
Write the email. Short, dated, factual, no apology. Put it in writing specifically because it creates a record. That's the whole reason, not because email is more polite. Three sentences: I'm pumping for my infant and am covered by the PUMP Act. I need a space that's shielded from view, free from intrusion, and not reallocated for events. The storage room...