The Fifth Trimester by Lauren Smith Brody

Author:Lauren Smith Brody
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2017-04-03T16:00:00+00:00

These are not unreasonable things to ask for, especially if you make the case loud and clear that pumping time can be working time. Nothing moves mountains faster than dollars saved. See Chapter 12 for advice having that conversation if you need it. I have a feeling that bosses who are unfamiliar with pumping—either they’ve never done it themselves or never had partners go through it—think that it involves some kind of yogic meditation. To be fair, the first few days can require a little inner-peace-finding to get to that first crucial milk letdown. But after that, you can write game-changing code, negotiate a late-night talk show host contract, or practice your first TED Talk—all while milk comes out of your body for twenty minutes. Heck, maybe you can even spend that time building a better breast pump—MIT held a breast-pump hackathon in 2014, and there are several in early development now. (One, Babyation, which uses only small disks on the nipples to allow for fully clothed pumping, far exceeded its $50,000 Kickstarter goal for funds in early 2016, and looks really promising.) But we’re not there yet.

So ask for what you need. And if you don’t get it, make your own solution—ideally one you can share with other coworkers who may need it one day, too.

I give you the story of Liz’s “Narnia.”

Liz, a high school English teacher in the suburbs of Philadelphia, had an adorable but stubborn first baby who wouldn’t take a bottle. So when Liz’s second baby had no such drama, she was thrilled to be able to pump for her at work. However, Liz’s school didn’t have a lactation room for its staff. “My only option really was a bathroom,” she says. “So instead I turned a supply closet at the back of my classroom into the school’s de facto pumping station.” Yes, even while high schoolers were having class. The space inside the closet was surprisingly homey. Liz filled it with books and lighting and a place to do some grading, and, ever the English teacher, started calling the closet Narnia, like the world beyond the wardrobe door in the C. S. Lewis classic, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. She put up a sign: NARNIA, DO NOT ENTER.

In the process, she educated a whole bunch of Philly high schoolers. “Early on, an eleventh-grade boy walked in on me, and I screamed, and he immediately closed the door,” she recalls. “I don’t think he saw anything, but as I sat there and finished pumping I realized anything he’s going to think I was doing is so much worse than what I was actually doing. So I found him later and said, ‘Just so you know, here’s what’s up…’ ” After that, Liz made a general announcement to her whole class about “how nursing working mothers feed their kids when their kids aren’t there.” Instead of giggles, she got respect.

Liz started talking about Narnia outside of the classroom, too, making lighthearted mentions of it in the faculty lounge so other teachers and staff would know that it was available to them.

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