I recall a conversation I had with a woman who was my neighbor at the time, telling me how she handled feeding her newborn as a working mom: It really wasn't an issue, she said, she simply brought her baby to work with her and nursed her in the office. I was far enough away from having to plan my own parenting options that I simply took mental note of it and finished drinking my glass of wine.
Two years later I'm sitting in a lactation class, seemingly the only one with questions. "But if I'm coming into and out of the office, or even traveling, how do I get on a SCHEDULE?" I ask the woman at the top of the circle. "You just breast feed like you normally would, and then you pump some additional for when you are in the office," she said.
This answer didn't satisfy me. What if I didn't have more milk to pump? She seemed to assume I was going to have a steady presence in the office, but seeing as my job involves a lot of travel, that wasn't going to be the case. How would I manage pumping in, say, airport bathrooms, or after a day of back to back meetings? And what about others' around me? Would everyone understand my need to nurse? I spent my first few months of pregnancy in silence, taking perhaps more meetings and going on more business trips, as if to shore up enough pre-mommyhood chips for when I'd need to cash them in later.
I didn't want to make this group class all about me, so I let the questions linger in my head. Later, asking other women how they managed to breastfeed while working I was told much the same thing by all of them, "You just figure it out." I envisioned "figuring it out" meaning something akin to developing a milk inventory spreadsheet, wearing a breast pump under my clothes and people associating me with this constant, electric sucking sound.
I was glad to see women like Margaret Heffernan--whose book about the dynamics of women in the workplace The Naked Truth I practically ate it was so relevant and consuming--address this issue of being a lactating executive. On the face of it, feeding one's child is such an unquestioned necessity; why is the management of this task so fraught with anxiety? Why should the fact that I am working while handling this activity make others--and hence myself--so uncomfortable?
"I don't know why you can't sometimes take the baby with you to work and nurse her when you need to," H-band said. I looked at him like he'd just suggested we join the circus.
"No no no no no. Nope. Not doing that. No. I mean, no. Not appropriate." And yet, didn't my former neighbor say that she did that at her job with the city? What makes me so different? Shouldn't I feel more empowered to develop a strategy that works for me as my company's co-founder?
Heffernan's post describes how another executive mom, Sabrina Parsons, struggles but manages the day to day feeding of her baby while heading up a Silicon Valley software company. Fact is, as one of Heffernan's readers points out, the law requires that women be allowed time and a place to express milk while at work, whether she's the CEO of the company or entry level. I know from personal stories how companies such as Walmart even provide spaces for employees to handle the care--and feeding--of their newborns.
But, notes Heffernan, "...the true barrier to women breastfeeding at work isn't legal; it is cultural. I could get away with it because I was the CEO. There are many, many companies that find this very difficult to take, not least because it reminds them that their employees do have other priorities in their lives beyond work!"
I recall several years ago a sponsor at BlogHer who called me after the conference to complain about how inappropriate it was that women were allowed to breastfeed in the vicinity of their sponsored area. I reminded this person that we not only allowed breastfeeding, we provided a lounge for it. Then why, the female sponsor asked, didn't we kindly ask women who opted to breastfeed in more public places to go to the lounge? Because, I told her, we didn't think of nursing anywhere at the conference as inappropriate. The lactation lounge was for women who wanted quiet and privacy. For those who didn't require either, the rest of our space was also fair game.
I have to laugh that this sponsor, who was targeting moms, felt that breastfeeding was so off-brand, even an embarassment. This incident reminds me that while I do not feel in the least bit uncomfortable with the notion of women breastfeeding in my workspace, the possibility of others' discomfort and disenchantment with women who integrate their mothering and their jobs affects me. Indeed, there remains a tension, for me, anyway, around bringing my mom duties to the office. Though we offer lounges for breastfeeding moms at our conferences, we don't have too many precedents in our office itself. While there are so many mothers at our company, their children are past breastfeeding age, or they work out of their homes, for the most part. I do feel that my choice to have a child and to breastfeed are just that, choices, not sweeping policy decisions that require everyone to have to witness.
I will not push back meetings to go pump. Nor will I feed my kid behind Levolor blinds. I know some people do, and I think it's great they are able to. I will prefer to surreptitiously surrender to someplace that's private and that has an electrical outlet, pack away the proceeds in a heavily sealed bag in the company refrigerator, and jump on the next con call.
I appreciate that the law and my colleagues will allow me to acknowledge that I am a Mom because the realities of life raising children while working make both unignorable. Though, for now, I need a line drawn, even a self-imposed one, to make both work.
