Pumping at work
My biggest concern when I was about to go back to work was pumping at work. My workplace is nice to provide us pumping mothers with a lactation room. There are many pumping mothers at where I work.
The first week after getting back to work, I used Freemie. My pumping schedule was 9am, 12pm, 3pm and then while driving back from work at 6pm. At 1pm, during my lunch time, I would go to the lactation room and do marmet.
Despite having a lactation room, I didn't use it. I pumped at my cubicle. My colleagues didn't hear or even realise that I was pumping away. As my supply was really low, I did power pumping at all times. Sometimes, while I am pumping and working, I don't even realise how fast time passed.
It was really good and working out for me. But using the Freemie, my output decreased. As it is I am not producing much, the decrease was a big impact on me. I believe the decrease was partly using Freemie as well as stress at work. Also I can't feel let-down when I do this at work. The stress is not on me though. I am still quite free, like before maternity leave. But the stress is listening to people get scolded, everyone rushing deadline, problems after problems and so on.
So the following week, I decided to use back the breast funnel and shield. That was yesterday. And oh my God, I was so tired to the point of fatigue. And that is only 1 day. Let me explain why.
When using funnel, my schedule changed to 10am, 1pm, 4pm and then back home, 7pm. So at 10am, I started heading to the lactation room. Waited 5 minutes for the lift and walked 5 minutes to the lactation room. It is located quite far from my office. Set up the pump takes another 5 minutes and then I proceeded with 30 minutes pump. Can't do power pump. Then 5 minutes to pack the pump, 10 minutes to head back to office. All together 1 hour for 1 session.
At 1pm session, I decided to do a powerpump. Same thing, takes 15 minutes to lactation room and setup and then proceeded to pump 1 hour and then another 15 minutes back to office. It's 1.5 hours.
At 4pm, repeated 10am session.
By that time, I was tired. The pump though was not very heavy, but the ice pack was super heavy and I had 3 packs of it. Some colleagues told me to just keep it in the fridge. Unfortunately, I didn't buy a separate cooler bag. Mine is attached with the breastpump bag. So, it was really exhausting.
By the time I got home, I was dizzy, tired and moody. Granted if no one complain of the time I am missing from my cubicle then ok. But if my bosses start seeing my disappearance, don't think it is good for me. 3.5 hours out of my 8 hours of work it's really not good.
Since I found the total output between Freemie and breast funnel is about the same, only an increase of 0.5oz more than Freemie, so, today, I am back with Freemie. But I feel so sad always seeing only 1.5oz per session.
Hope it gets better soon with Motherlove supplement.
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