Travel 2 weeks in a row??? Never again…

Last week was horrible… Left Monday at 8am and didn’t get home until Thursday night at 10pm. Between that time I was on 8 flights, went from Washington state to Washington DC (neither of which were intended locations). Had 3 hours of sleep the first night, 5, the second, and a little better with 6 the third. Many hours were spend in airports just waiting to see when the next flight was actually going to leave, if at all (weather delays, and President Obama in Chicago causing a 3 hour shutdown of the airspace). I stayed in three different hotel rooms, one without a refrigerator, and none with the little freezer part. As a result I wasn’t able to save any of my milk. It was a week of pump and dump in bathroom stalls. It would have been impossibly hard to save it, keep it cold, keep my pump clean, and keep track of my checked bag. Maybe I should have put more effort into it-I could have put ice in baggies and put that in my mini-cooler, but the trip was so mentally and physically exhausting that I wasn’t thinking straight either. I had to make the choice for those precious few hours in the hotel room. Pump, or sleep.

I was home for two days and now I’m on the road again. Thankfully this time, we drove and I will be in one hotel room for the entire trip (4 days 3 nights), with a refrigerator WITH a freezer portion. I’m hoping I didn’t kill my supply last week. When I was home for the 2 days, I felt like Winston wanted more than I could provide. Plus- I was actually TRYING to feed him some formula, so I could pump instead and leave him with at least some milk when I was gone. Last week was good because he didn’t have but a bottle or two of formula, but he whipped out the freezer stash. Had I know that I wouldn’t have been able to save any milk from last week, I would have saved half the freezer stash for him for this week. The poor thing is going to have 90% formula for about 4 days. I hope he’s not too gassy!

My husband also tried to feed him sweet potatoes last week and he wasn’t a fan. This baby doesn’t seem to like food.

Day to day pumping at work for me

This is my cute little lunch box underneath my desk with my two pumps and my morning bag of milk. (sorry for the poor image quality – cell phone picture)

Supplies: two hand pumps (since I’m too cheep to buy a dual electric- plus they are virtually silent), ice packs, milk storage bags or big bottle with sealing lid and a big lunch box to put them all in. Optional supplies that I find handy are napkins or a hand towel to wipe drips off of myself the pumps and my desk, a large water bottle since I always get immediately thirsty when I start to pump or nurse, and a sharpie to label the bags.

I don’t wash my pump after every time, or even every day. I keep it refrigerated when at home and in my lunch box with the ice packs when at work. I usually wash it every other day at home in the dish washer.

I’m fortunate to have an office with a locking door, and a semi-flexible schedule so I can usually pump when I need to. I have the reputation for eating a lot, so no one questions why I bring a lunch box to work, then go home for lunch, and THEN bring it back with me for the afternoon ;).

After I am finished pumping I typically pour the milk into a milk storage bag so it won’t leak out of the pumps reservoir while I’m carrying it home. I will pour it all into one bag- mainly because I’m cheep, but I don’t see the need to separate it into 2-3oz servings (what my baby typically eats at one time) because, if a bag needs to be thawed while I’m at work, I am probably gone long enough for him to need more than one bottle. I typically get anywhere from 5-8 oz in any one work pumping session. I keep the bag of milk in the lunch box with the ice packs and my pump until I get home. Then decide if it needs to be left in the refrigerator for the next day, or if it’s Friday, it can be frozen.

On Mondays W starts the day out with frozen milk that I stick in the fridge the evening before. That amount of milk will typically be replaced by the milk I bring home on Friday and put in the freezer. This is a good way to practice ‘first in-first out’ and keep the freezer stash from getting too old.

Mornings are always more plentiful than the afternoons, even if I do nurse right before I leave for work, and Mondays are always more plentiful than Fridays. I’m not quite sure why this is, but I’ve read that it’s pretty much the norm.

My husband is a stay at home dad, so I am fortunate I don’t have to deal with preparing bottles to take to daycare – then hoping they properly handle them. I imagine that is probably a big pain.

One other thing- we microwave the milk. Yes- I know that is supposedly the biggest sin you can make with breast milk, but here is my reasoning. The two arguments for not microwaving breast milk are- 1) it will destroy the living cells and antibodies contained in milk that make it so good for your baby and 2) potential hot spots that could scald your baby (this is true for any liquids you microwave)

My defense against point 1- is this really any worse than formula??? Formula doesn’t have living cells or antibodies, yet babies all across the world live and thrive on formula… Plus, my baby will still get the real stuff when I’m home. Point 2- just mix it up and test it first.. Really- it’s that simple.