When my daughter, Ruby, was an infant, a friend bought me a T-shirt that said “Ruby’s Cafe,” which I proudly wore when I nursed her.

My breastfeeding days are over, but I recently stumbled across these “boobie beanies”  on Etsy. I have to say, I vastly prefer this in-your-face approach to breastfeeding fashion to the cover-yourself-up-in-a-tent approach. But I guess I’m not very modest. What do you think?

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I know I’m not posting very often to the site right now, but I have not forsaken you, dear reader! Please subscribe by email or RSS. Connect on Facebook, or Twitter, so you know when there’s a post.

I’m pleased to announce Working Moms Break has its first foreign correspondent! Also known as my friend, former coworker, and fellow working mom, Lucie Moses.

Years ago, while I was quietly descending into full-time job madness, Lucie seemed to have arranged the perfect life as a part-time freelance designer. Now I have that part-time freelance life, she’s one-upped me by moving to FRANCE.

I was thrilled when she offered to write about what it’s like being a working mom in France. Some of her descriptions were surprising, (What’s up with the French and breastfeeding?). As you’ll see, even Lucie has mixed feelings about some of the “benefits” of being a mom in France. But most of it had me drooling with envy.

Lucie with her husband, Dean, and sons Felix (left) and Milo (right)

Guest post by Lucie Moses

Here is me in a nutshell: I was born and raised in France. I moved to America when I was 21 years old. I’m a freelance web designer. After 16 years living in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’m spending a year in Paris with my American husband and our two children, age 9 and 6. Below are some of my observations about the differences between being a working mother in France versus in California.

Warning: I have only been here a few months and my experiences are mostly anecdotal. Still, I hope you will find it interesting.

1. The 35-hour work week + 5 weeks of vacation

The French work fewer hours than Americans. The official work week in France is 35 hours. In practice, a lot of companies have stayed on a 39 hours/week schedule. Instead, the 4 hours/week that they owe you are bundled into extra days off that you can take whenever, or a Friday off every other week.

The French also work fewer days. Workers get 5 weeks of paid vacation. Plus sick days, which are not counted as vacation days. Bonus: France is a Catholic country, so that means holidays every time Jesus goes up, down or sideways.

Almost all French people take several weeks off in the summer. A working mother’s dream!

2. Motherhood-friendly labor laws

Women get paid maternity leave during the last month of pregnancy + the first two months of motherhood. You get an extra month off if you breastfeed. By paid leave, I mean 100% of your salary. Working until you due date is simply not done in France.

A friend of mine is a teacher in Paris. She has young children and works part time. Her school is required by law to allow her to work part time until her youngest child is 3 years old. After that, she gets her old full-time job back. I believe all government employees can choose this path.

3. Work-friendly kid schedule

When I called the dentist to schedule visits for my sons, I was surprised that the time slot the receptionist suggested was 6:00 pm. I’m used to skipping work to take my kids to the doctor or the dentist. I consider myself lucky if I can get an appointment outside of school hours.

Same thing at school: The bi-yearly parent-teacher conferences happen in the evening, between 6:30 and 8:30 pm.

My kids’ karate class? From 6:30 to 7:30 pm on Wednesdays; all the other classes were just as late.

To tell the truth, I find the karate class to be too late for my kids. They should be home eating dinner at that time, not practicing kicks. I guess I’m holding on to the American early supper. Still, I appreciate the effort to make such activities compatible with being a working parent.

4. Good health coverage

Remember that visit to the dentist I just mentioned? Free, as part of a program that provides a free dental care to all children, once every three years. I’m not sure how much a dental visit usually costs, but I bet it’s a fraction of what we would pay in the U.S.

My youngest son broke his arm soon after we moved to France. All in all, the visit to the ER and the follow up visits and X-rays set us back about $200. That’s without insurance.

The previous year, our oldest son broke his arm while we lived in America. All in all, the visit to the ER and the follow up visits and X-rays set us back about $2,000. That’s with insurance. We had a supposedly high-end PPO, but there were all sort of co-pays and deductibles. Being a parent in America is a pricey endeavor.

5. Free school from age 3, cheap before that

In France, free public school starts at age 3 (or 2.9 if you have a January baby). Childcare for younger children is also heavily subsidized. If you don’t make a lot of money, it’s very cheap.

When my niece was a baby, my sister was between jobs. Part of her unemployment benefit was nearly-free childcare three mornings a week to allow her the time and energy to find a new job.

6. School within a few blocks from your house

I don’t know about you, but picking a preschool for my kid in the U.S. was an agonizing process. I researched, I visited, I weighted the pros and cons. Three years later, I went through it all over again to pick an elementary school. When I got to France, there was no choice to be made. I got assigned a school. End of story.

As far as I can tell, the vast majority of French kids simply go to the school closest to them. That’s where you get assigned. It’s very hard to get a transfer to another school so most parents don’t even consider the other schools. What you lose in choice, you gain in reduced stress and improved daily commute. The vast majority of kids go to a school within walking distance of their house. Our school is three blocks away.

Bonus: all my kids’ friends live within a 8 block radius of our house. I certainly don’t miss driving them to playdates.

7. No lunchbox to pack

I am still giddy every morning: no lunchboxes to pack! Oh, how I used to hate making lunches every morning for my picky eaters. Will they eat it? Is it nutritious? Why did I forget to buy grapes again? This used to be a major stress in my mornings.

In their French public school, my kids get hot sit-down nutritious meals. Eating well is a big deal in France. School cafeterias reflect that; the menus are varied and appetizing. My oldest son has become more adventurous with food. He eats all sort of new things at school, including rabbit meat.

My little one is still as much of a picky eater as he ever was but I don’t worry about it because there is nothing I can do about it. He doesn’t nag me about me getting a packed lunch instead because packed lunch simply aren’t allowed (except for kids with severe food allergies). He always eats at least a piece of a fruit, a yogurt and some bread. The bread is hand-delivered every morning from a real bakery. Good stuff.

8. No volunteering at school

Perhaps the biggest culture shock for me this year is my relationship with my kids’ school. I am used to spending a lot of my time volunteering in the classroom, chaperoning field trips, attending school plays, taking photos for the yearbook, socializing with other parents during pick-up and drop-off, discussing my children’s progress with the teachers, baking cookies for birthdays and generally being involved in myriad little ways.

This year, none of that is happening. I’m not allowed on school grounds. I don’t know the names or faces of my children’s classmates. I have barely met the teachers. There was no school show during the holidays.

Honestly, I miss volunteering in the schools terribly and so do my kids. My children’s school life used to be a big part of my social life. But in other ways, it’s liberating. I never have to juggle rescheduling a work meeting to attend my son’s recital for the simple reason that there is no recital to attend. I didn’t feel any pressure to bring a cake to school for his birthday. No other mom does it. Working parents in France don’t have to think too much about school. Less is expected of them.

9. Le Breast is not Le Best

Yes, breast milk is best for baby and it’s a wonderful bonding experience for mother and child. Still, you’ve got to admit it can be very demanding, especially when the mother is working.

French women have the worst breastfeeding record of any civilized country. The majority of French babies are weaned by 3 months of age. Pumping milk while at work? Unheard of. Breastfeeding past the infant months is considered almost selfish because it prevents other members (dad, siblings, grandparents, nannies) from taking a full role.

I have mixed feeling about this one. I am definitely pro-breastfeeding. When my son was a baby, I felt self-conscious breastfeeding in France. Family and friends were incredulous.

“Is he really still nursing, at this age?” they would ask. “Is it even possible to have milk a year after birth?”

But at the same time, breastfeeding is often a source of stress for American mothers. There is a huge social pressure to nurse at all costs and for as long as possible. Perhaps there is a happy middle between those two?

10. Distance between kids and parents is considered healthy

When my oldest son was born, attachment parenting was all the rage in San Francisco. Following the advices of Dr Sears, we gave an earnest try to the family bed (didn’t work out for us), I “wore” my baby often (we liked that), and we acted as human pacifiers to put him to sleep.

My sister eyed me with suspicion, like I’d been brainwashed by a cult. Her baby was bottle-fed, pushed around in a stroller and relied on a stuffed rabbit and her thumb to soothe herself to sleep. During a vacation in France, my mom handed me an article about how allowing your children into your bed would scar them later in life (something about mixed messages confusing their sexuality).

Beyond the baby years, I get the message that it’s considered bad for parents to interfere too much in their childrens’ lives. On French school yards, kids handle their own conflicts. My soft-skinned California kids are still adjusting. When I’m with French parents, I don’t feel the need to constantly interact with their children. In fact, that’s considered counter-productive. Sure, you are here to provide some structure (and good nutrition!) but the rest unfolds by itself. The French are careful not to smother their children and not to let their children take over their lives.

A few weeks ago, someone named Sarah* left a comment on my blog saying she was starting a “mother-friendly campaign” at work. I’d never heard of such a thing.

A mother-friendly campaign? What does that look like? Is it for coworkers? HR? Company executives? New mothers? Is it about changing attitudes, or policy, or both? How do you go about planning something like this? And how cool is this woman to think of it?

I contacted Sarah and asked if she could tell me more. I assumed she worked in HR, and this campaign was part of her job. Or maybe she was a fed up working mom and decided to do something constructive about the way she was treated at work. Turns out I was wrong on both counts.

Sarah works for a faith-based social services organization in the Southeastern part of the U.S. She doesn’t work in HR, nor does she have children. The campaign is a volunteer effort, outside of her regular job duties. Her inspiration comes from the fact that she is trained in public health and, although she’s American, she spent much of her childhood in various parts of Africa where she says it was commonplace to see women breastfeed and take care of children while they worked, shopped for groceries, and went to church. When Sarah moved back to the U.S., the lack of support for mothers here was striking.

Sarah was kind enough to let me share her answers to my other questions here on the blog, but asked that I do not use her real name or name her employer. So without further ado…

Question: What is a mother-friendly campaign?

Answer: In our definition, this is a campaign to create a work environment that supports mothers trying to balance caring for their children and work expectations.

Question: Why did you decide to start one?

Answer: There a couple of issues that make being a mother in our organization more difficult then not being a mother:

Breast pumping rooms are not available in any of the different locations.
New mothers get a maximum of three months of unpaid leave. Flexible work schedules during or after this leave period are not an option.
We are a social services organization. As a part of what we do, daycare is offered to families attending classes through the organization. However, daycare is not offered to employees of the organization.
Like many workplaces, there is pressure to work late, and coworkers often don’t understand why parents have to leave on time to pick up their kids.

Question: How do you start a mother-friendly campaign?

Answer: There are three of us hoping to change our work environment. We started just under two months ago. We don’t have any experience with such a campaign, so we are taking each step as it comes.

We are in the ‘research’ process right now, gathering materials regarding employee morale and productiveness when mothers are supported. We will also be talking with other women we work with to get their input and suggestions, and garner support.

The next step is to write a proposal that outlines the current system, the benefits of a more supportive environment, and examples of what that environment might look like for our organization. We hope to present this proposal to the head of HR and request a meeting to discuss the proposal.

Question: What do you hope to to get out of the process?

Answer: Our primary goal is to create policy changes that would allow women to balance caring for children and work. Our assumption is that we will not be able to see all of our recommended changes take place, so I believe that our first goal would be to allow for a more flexible work schedule that would include

working full-time from home
working part-time from home and part-time on location
extended maternity leave
• paid maternity leave

In the long term, we would also like to see a deeper culture change that doesn’t degrade mothers, but values them as equals and recognizes the extra work they do on a daily basis.

Question: Do you have any advice for people who would like to start a similar campaign at their workplace?

Answer: At this point I have no idea what advice we would give…it’s too new for us. We would love to receive advice!

Has anyone else tried to do something similar at work? Sarah and I both would love to hear your about your experiences (what worked, what didn’t work) with trying to make the workplace more friendly to parents. What kind of change would you like to see at your workplace?

*Names have been changed.

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I recently wrote a series about barriers to pumping at work, which reappeared, in shorter form, on the Huffington Post.

Given the comments and emails I’ve received from distressed, exhausted, and humiliated moms who read the story, ignorance in alive and well in the workplace. Even HR managers have trouble understanding how or why they should support a breastfeeding mom.

The ignorance is sort of understandable. If you haven’t breastfed a child yourself, or lived with someone who has, you don’t know what all the fuss is about. That’s why I’ve put together this short list. Please send it to your boss, your HR director, your coworkers, and anyone you know who is in a position to support new moms in the workplace.

If you prefer to send a more printer-friendly pdf version, download it here.

5 Things Employers Should Know about Breastfeeding

1. You are required by law to accommodate nursing moms.

The law used to be fuzzy on this, and it used to vary from state to state. But since the health care reform bill was passed in March 2010, it’s crystal clear. By law, all employers must provide breastfeeding employees with reasonable break time and a private, non-bathroom place to express breast milk during the workday, up until the child’s first birthday. You can read the full text of the law here.

2. We need time.

What is reasonable break time? Typically, it takes 15 minutes to pump, plus time to get to and from the lactation room and clean the pump parts. Most women need to pump 2-3 times a day in an 8-hour period. If we’re not given adequate time to pump, we can develop a pretty serious infection called mastitis which is painful, can cause a fever, and may require antibiotics. And even if a woman doesn’t develop mastitis, if she doesn’t have enough time during the day to pump, her milk supply will start to disappear.

3. We need privacy.

This is a breast pump.

We need a small, quiet space (not a bathroom stall!) with windows that can be covered, an outlet, and a door that locks.

It’s important to understand that breastfeeding and pumping breast milk are two very different things. Lots of women breastfeed in public. It’s sweet. It’s natural. It’s part of caring for a baby. It can be done discreetly for those who are modest, with a cloth draped over the baby’s head.

Pumping is a totally different deal. It is not natural. Pumping involves complicated equipment that needs to be assembled and disassembled at every pump break. The pump itself makes loud, groaning noises and evokes thoughts of dairy farm machinery. Asking a nursing mom to pump in a space that is not private is like asking someone to pee in the hallway. It’s barbaric.

Here are some of the unacceptable places women have told me they had to pump: a bathroom stall, a closet that doesn’t close completely, a storage room with foul smelling solvents, a cubicle, a car, a conference room with clear glass walls, and rooms that don’t lock.

4. We need understanding.

Unless they have children of their own, most adults don’t get this whole breastfeeding thing. Supervisors and coworkers may act resentful about the “special breaks” nursing moms get. They may imply that there is something weird or even perverted about pumping. They may think storing milk in the company refrigerator is gross.

It’s important that you, the boss, set a positive, respectful tone for the rest of the company.

One way to do this is to be proactive. Talk with your employee, preferably before she goes on maternity leave. Let her know that you’d like to work with her to make sure she has the appropriate accommodations if she decides she wants to continue breastfeeding when she returns to work. The last thing an exhausted new mom needs is to try to explain to her HR director what a breast pump is the first day back from maternity leave.

If you hear or hear of rude comments from coworkers about a breastfeeding mom, it is your job to address them, just as you would address a racist or sexist comment in the workplace.

We need your empathy. New moms are torn in two directions when they return to work. Sometimes it feels impossible to be a good employee and be a good parent. There is nothing selfish about a new mom who is making the extra effort to continue breastfeeding and still do her job. She is a hero. You should give her a trophy. Seriously. If you don’t believe me, see #5.

5. Everyone benefits, including your business.

One of the primary reasons a woman breastfeeds her baby is the health benefits. Breast milk is packed with disease-fighting substances that add up to healthier babies and healthier mothers, and that happens to add up to a healthier workforce, and a healthier economy (through lower health care costs). The benefits are too numerous to list out, and new ones are still being discovered. Here are a few:

Baby benefits

• Lower risk of stomach viruses, respiratory illnesses, ear infections, and meningitis
• Lower risk of various conditions later in life, including type 1 & 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, allergies, and inflammatory bowel disease
• Improved cognitive development (Yup. Studies show breastfed babies have slightly higher IQs.)

Mother benefits

• Lower risk of breast cancer and type 2 diabetes
• Mitigation of stress and postpartum depression
• Joyful bonding with baby
• Cheaper than formula (although breast pumps aren’t cheap)

Business benefits (from The Business Case for Breastfeeding)

• Lower turnover
  Retention rates for companies with lactation support programs are 94%, versus the national average of only 59%.
• Lower absenteeism
  One-day absences to care for sick children occur more than twice as often for mothers of formula feeding infants.
• Lower medical insurance claims
  For every 1,000 babies not breastfed, a study found there are 2,033 extra physician visits, 212 extra hospitalization days, and 609 extra prescriptions for three illnesses alone–ear, respiratory, and gastrointestinal infection.
• Improved productivity & morale
  Employees at companies that support breastfeeding report improved morale, better satisfaction with their jobs, and higher productivity.

Economy benefits

And last but not least…If 90 percent of families were able to  breastfeed exclusively for six months (as doctors recommend), the United States could save $13 billion annually.

Need more information?

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has The Business Case for Breastfeeding with all kinds of information for employers who need help complying with the law.

The National Breastfeeding Helpline (800-994-9662) is a free service staffed with peer counselors who offer breastfeeding support and can answer questions in English and Spanish.

This is the third of a three-part series of posts about working moms and breastfeeding. Be sure to read Part I. and Part II. first.

After a thorough review of the office landscape, Jackie mentioned to her boss that there was no convenient place to pump. She suggested the most reasonable solution she could think of—using her own cubicle.

Her boss’s response was surprising for a man in his 40s with a wife and young children at home.

“He said ‘Whoa! You can’t be doing that,’” Jackie recalled. “’Those people who sit around you don’t have kids. You’re going to freak them out!’…He didn’t offer to help or talk to HR with me or anything.”

Jackie went ahead with her plan anyway, and her boss never said anything. An awkward stalemate, to say the least.

She bought a large drape and tension rod on Craigslist and lugged them into to office, along with several other new furnishings.

When it was time to pump, Jackie rigged up her new curtain and pulled it tightly across the opening of her cubicle. Then she taped up a sign written in thick, black marker that said, ‘Please do not disturb. Privacy Please.’ She draped a blue fabric sarong from Bali over the top of the cubicle so people couldn’t peer down, then put on a Bebe au Lait nursing cover over her shirt. She turned on a portable fan she’d brought from home to disguise the moaning of the pump. She pulled her regular bra down around her waist, hooked on a hands-free pumping halter, wedged the plastic pump funnels in place, readjusted the nursing cover, and snapped on the machine.

“I could hear people walk by and say, ‘Where’s Jackie?’

“’I’m in here,’ I’d say. ‘I’m busy!’”

Now, I have to interject. As a mom who nursed two children for almost a year each, it never bothered me much when people saw me nursing my baby. When I was at the park or in a restaurant I found a way to hold my baby close to my chest so that little or none of my actual flesh was showing. I even breastfed my baby at work a couple times when I was just coming back from maternity leave—my boss at the time (another working mom, very pro-breastfeeding) encouraged this.

Luckily, I’m not especially modest. I decided that if someone was uncomfortable seeing me feed my baby, that was their problem. I told myself I was doing my part to educate them and make life a little less awkward for other breastfeeding moms who might cross their path in the future.

But the idea of someone seeing me pumping is horrifying. Something about the contraption, the bovine experience of being hooked up to a machine explicitly designed to pull the milk from one’s breasts—it is so particularly, uniquely undignified. A few times people did walk in on me when I was pumping in the bathroom at work, before I insisted on taking over the conference room. And once, a male (childless) coworker sent an email to the entire 40-person office complaining about the “bodily fluids” in the refrigerator. (Since no one was harboring a urine sample in the office fridge, it’s safe to assume he was complaining about the baby bottles of milk I’d stashed on a lower shelf.) Despite all my confidence about breastfeeding, I was mortified by the experience.

I think about Jackie, exhausted from nighttime feedings, hunched over her desk, arms wrapped around her chest to hold the nursing wrap in place, hoping no one would walk by, and I have a visceral reaction. I want to cross my own arms over my chest. Pumping without complete privacy is about as embarrassing as having to pee in the hallway. No one should ever have to do that.

Not surprisingly, Jackie gave up after four weeks.

“It was just too hard. I nursed at home in the evenings, but gave up pumping during the day. And then, of course, my milk supply went down and I had to stop. I felt so guilty about it.”

This all happened more than a year ago, but she still gets upset when she talks about it. Even over the phone I could hear the guilt and the anger in her voice. I suppose I was getting a little worked up myself.

“Did it occur to you while this was going on that you were working for a do-gooder organization?” I asked. “I mean, this isn’t BP. It’s a non-profit that’s all about enlightening the public.”

“I couldn’t think about it at the time,” she said. “I never really expected much from them. It was even worse for some of the other women.”

Several coworkers were walked in on repeatedly while pumping, and one coworker was told she had to pump in a room full of foul-smelling solvents. Another had to report to a male supervisor who was so uncomfortable with the physical aspect of her pregnancy that he told her not to discuss it at work.

“He basically wanted her to be a floating head with no body,” said Jackie.

Most of these women quit breastfeeding earlier than they had intended to—it was just too awkward to pump at work. But one woman, we’ll call her Sinead, managed to pump using the conference rooms and the telephone closet until her child was a year old.

I called Sinead and asked her how she managed to keep going for that long.

“I was just fiercely committed to it,” she said.

Sinead, like Jackie, had a baby with health issues. Her daughter was born very small and couldn’t suck hard enough to get milk. In order to make breastfeeding work, Sinead had to alternate feeding and pumping hourly, almost around the clock, for the first three months. She said she tried every alternative therapy possible to establish her milk supply, including acupuncture and massive doses of the herb fenugreek, which increases milk flow.

“One of the side effects of taking tons of fenugreek is that you smell like maple syrup. So for months I went around smelling like an IHOP,” Sinead said with a little laugh.

When Sinead’s daughter was five months old, it was time to go back to work. Like Jackie, Sinead discovered no one was going to make it easy. But by then she had worked so hard to be able to breastfeed despite her daughter’s health issues that she decided nothing was going to deter her.

“Basically you have to be willing to do this very private thing in a relatively public place,” Sinead said. “No one wants to be caught pumping. It’s incredibly unattractive. It’s not how you want people to see you.”

When she pumped, Sinead would sit with her back against the door, and try to put her mind elsewhere.

“They say to increase your milk supply, you should think about your baby,” Sinead said. “I used to imagine my daughter and I were in little boat that was floating in sea of milk. It was often a Hawaiian sea of milk.

“Sometimes I wonder if I had a comfortable space if my milk supply would have gone up. It’s a shame that it’s not a little easier for everybody.”

I asked Sinead how her daughter is doing now.

“She just had her third birthday,” she said brightly. “She’s caught up in size. She had all the benefits of breastfeeding. She’s just great!”

Jackie’s baby, now age two, is thriving as well. I suppose this story has a happy ending, except that nothing has changed at the progressive, family-friendly office.

A shorter version of this series appeared on the Huffington Post.

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I’m working on a fact sheet that women like Jackie and Sinead can take to their employers describing what nursing moms need in the workplace. I’d love to get ideas from you.

What do you think employers ought to know? What should coworkers know? What do you wish you had known as a new mom before you went back to work?

This is the second of a series of posts about working moms and breastfeeding. If you have not read Part I., start here.

My friend, Jackie* has worked for almost a decade for a large, well-respected non-profit in the Denver area. As you read her story, please keep in mind that she works in a state where employers are legally obligated to accommodate the needs of breastfeeding employees, at an organization where the HR department is fond of touting how “family-friendly” it is.

Jackie had a complicated delivery; her newborn son suffered trauma that required major surgery. It was as terrifying as you can imagine. Somehow Jackie managed to breastfeed, despite her son’s surgery and lengthy hospital stay, and throughout her five-month maternity leave. She fully intended to continue breastfeeding when she returned to work for the recommended first year.

“I had a child with health issues, and there are so many health benefits of breastfeeding,” she told me. “I wanted to give him every extra advantage.”

When her baby was five months old, Jackie packed up a rented hospital-grade breast pump with the complicated mix of emotions that many new moms experience—sadness, relief, guilt—and returned to work.

On the first day back, Jackie’s male boss said, “You know, people are going to look at you differently now that you’re a parent. Most people here don’t have kids.”

“I didn’t know what he meant,” Jackie told me, “but it totally freaked me out. The message I took from that was, ‘Don’t rock the boat.’”

Around that same time, a male coworker asked her if she’d “read any good books” while she was on maternity leave. The question was so profoundly out of sync with the five exhausting months she’d spent running back and forth between home and The Children’s Hospital, she didn’t know what to say.

“They think you’re lying on a beach when you’re on maternity leave,” Jackie said. “They have no idea.”

The family-friendly HR department didn’t offer any information for moms returning to work. A lactation consultant had told Jackie that her employer was legally obligated to provide a private place to pump (not a bathroom). So her first day back, Jackie asked the HR staff where she should go.

The human resources administrator, (a woman without kids of her own), directed her to a tiny, windowless “telephone” room with a chair, a phone, and an electrical outlet. The room had a sliding door that didn’t shut completely. Anyone who cared to look could peek through the small crack, and it was far from soundproof. The woman proudly pointed out the cheap latch lock that had been installed after another nursing mom had complained.

“It was a basically a converted closet,” Jackie said.

In theory a larger room was available, but it was in a wildly inconvenient location across the street in another building, and it was supposed to be reserved for people preparing to give presentations.

“I’d have to tell the guy who runs it, ‘Hey, I need your room three times a day so you have to tell your famous lecturers they can’t be in there.’”

Other nursing moms in the office had rejected these options, choosing instead to book the small conference rooms when they could get them. These rooms were more conveniently located, but lacked privacy.

“They have clear glass for about three feet from the floor, then frosted glass,” Jackie said. “People are always bending over to see who has the room. Sometimes people barge in. Even if you want to use them, you can’t always get them—you have to book them in advance and they’re in high demand.”

Jackie talked with another nursing coworker who was in the same dilemma. Technically, the law in Jackie’s state said their employer was required to provide appropriate accommodations that were not a toilet stall, but Jackie said the wording seemed to her a little vague. (Since March 23, 2010, the law has become more clear, thanks to the new health reform bill.)

The women decided not to complain. Their decision had less to do with the law and more to do with this: Both had carefully negotiated changes to their schedules that were not the norm at the office. There was no official flextime policy at their family-friendly organization; each person had to work out her schedule with her supervisor. The implication was that they were getting special treatment, which could be taken away at any time.

Don’t rock the boat.

“We were on such precarious terms,” Jackie explained to me. “Plus, I was exhausted. I didn’t have the wherewithal to say ‘This isn’t acceptable.’”

Jackie decided to come up with her own solution. Read Part III.

*Names and some identifying details have been changed.

* * *

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This is the first of a series of posts about working moms and breastfeeding.

I went back to work when my son was four months old and still living exclusively on a diet of breast milk. So approximately every three hours I dropped what I was doing and ducked into Conference Room B. All four of the small conference rooms in our office had clear glass walls, but the HR director and I had carefully covered the glass in Room B from floor to ceiling in dark red paisley tablecloths, secured with lots of thick packing tape. Our office manager had thoughtfully sent an email around the office reminding people not to book that room: “Remember ‘B’ is for Baby!”

Once inside, I always locked the door.

What I did next is something I have never heard another working mom say she enjoyed.

First I took off my shirt because I didn’t want it to get wet. Then I unsnapped my nursing bra, removed the pads, and set them face up on the conference table. I unpacked my ‘Medela Pump In Style,’ a breast pump cleverly disguised to look like a stylish backpack, one that might contain important legal briefs or confidential sales projections. I plugged it in. I assembled bottles and tiny plastic hoses quickly, then carefully positioned the suction cups.

When I turned the power dial, the pump began to wheeze and groan rhythmically. I often wondered if people could hear it in the adjacent conference rooms. The walls between them were paper-thin, but I didn’t care. I was just thankful that the lock on the door was secure.

Within a few seconds, milk began to drip, then trickle into the bottles. It would have been nice to relax into an oxytocin-induced meditative state, to enjoy pumping the way other people enjoy cigarette breaks.

But most of the time I had work to do. I learned early on to pin the suction cups in place with my right arm, leaving my left hand free (I’m left-handed) to page through whatever document I was reading and write comments in the margins.

After about ten minutes the bottles were two-thirds full. I snapped the pump off. It was suddenly very quiet while I patted my breasts dry with a paper towel and got dressed.

Then to the employee kitchen to wash everything and put away the milk.

We had one shared refrigerator in my office. I deliberately stored the bottles on the bottom shelf, against the side. Discreet, but not clandestine. I didn’t want to hide them behind people’s lunches. That would imply I was doing something shameful or perverse.

Occasionally a male employee would be fixing his coffee at the kitchen counter when I arrived to wash my pump parts. He usually left quickly—either out of embarrassment or a desire to give me some privacy. There was another sink available in the women’s bathroom which had two stalls, but it was small and cramped, there was no sponge or dish soap, and something about it seemed unsanitary to me, so I usually used the kitchen. Three hours later, I did it all again.

Even under the best of circumstances, pumping is time-consuming and inconvenient. I spent most of my job in back-to-back meetings—it was hard just to find time to use the bathroom or grab lunch. When I was breastfeeding, it seemed like I was constantly making apologies when I had to end a meeting early or start late. Luckily, most of my coworkers were very understanding.

But sometimes I would get tired of making apologies, or I would have attend a meeting at a client’s office, so instead of organizing my meetings around my every-three-hours pumping schedule, I’d pump around my meeting schedule. This strategy had big drawbacks—several months after I went back to work I developed mastitis, a painful infection that resulted from waiting too long to pump. I spent one miserable night alternately shivering with chills and sweating from fever before I went to the doctor and got antibiotics.

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Most of the women I know have made sacrifices to continue breastfeeding after they return to work. We do this despite the inconvenience and indignity of hooking ourselves up to a milking machine three times a day, because the health benefits for our babies and ourselves abound.

Many of our coworkers and employers, however, are still woefully ignorant about breastfeeding; without realizing it, they put us in situations that can be thoroughly humiliating.

In Part II. I’m going to tell you about what happened to my friend, Jackie. Go to Part II.

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