week 7 (first week back at work) 43-49 days

both boo and i survived my first week back to work. luckily i saved enough vacation time so that i only work 8am - noon for the first two weeks back. working part-time definitely made the transition easier on all of us, including daddy. i wake boo up at 6am and try to get her to eat. by 6:30am i pump (approx 4 oz) and make a bottle to be used while i'm gone. i'm out the door at 7:30am. i pump at work at 10am (approx 6 oz) and am home by 12:20pm. i feed boo immediately when i get home.

there was a lot of crying. boo still isn't in love with the bottle.

pumping at work wasn't as awkward as i envisioned although it did have it's moments. the people i work with are 85% male. luckily i have my own office. i had emailed everyone letting them know that at 10am a "DO NOT DISTURB" sign would be on my door. i couldn't decide on a proper way to say that i was pumping my breast milk. i was afraid of offending someone for some reason. so i ended the email with "my daughter is not a formula baby..." to my surprise most of the men took this to mean that boo would be coming to the office for me to nurse her. i know this because they asked if boo was still around. when i'd respond that boo had not been to the office, i'd watch the realization that i was actually pumping cross their faces. that is a look that still makes me laugh today.

another moment for me was figuring out what to do with everything after i pumped. i had brought a brown paper bag to put the bottles in to keep them incognito in the office fridge. however i hadn't given thought to the flanges. flanges look like funnels and should be washed after use. how is that done discreetly? we have a kitchen in our office and a restroom down the hall that we share with the other office suites. all i had in my office was an old home depot plastic bag that my predecessor had left behind crammed between the file cabinets. nothing odd about a girl walking down an office hallway to the restroom swinging a home depot bag right? on day 2 my brain kicked in and i started to put the flanges in the cooler bag (minus the ice packs) and toted that to the restroom. my modesty surprises me.