The Strangest Place You Ever Nursed or Pumped
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Tuesday, January 17, 2006
All this talk about breastfeeding at the pool or airing out your goodies while your kid romps in the flowers has me remembering what it was like to deal with pumping when I actually had to go places. I was exclusively pumping within a day or so of coming home from the hospital, so I never did end up having to nurse in public...but I did have to pump on a set schedule, no matter where I was.So, the top five weirdest places that I've pumped...
5. Near the picnic area of Paramount's Great America.
4. On a plane.
3. Sitting in my car in the driveway during a horrific ice storm because our power went out and my car has a household adapter.
2. On a rifle range during the Ohio smallbore state championships.
1. In the back of a tour bus on the way to Yahoo! headquarters while having a conversation with a VP of the New York Times. (he's cool...his son was born a few weeks before my Nora was)
Almost ended up having to pump at Google headquarters too...but eeked out of that one by getting there about twenty minutes late. I will say that the two times I flew to California kind of sucked because I had to keep pumping on my Ohio schedule...that meant waking up at 3am to pump every night. Ick.
Labels: Pumping Milk
Not a particularly strange place, but one of my fondest memories is of feeding my son in the Purple People Eater at Hesfes 2005 (and amusingly, if you google that phrase you find the blog of a friend of mine, with a discussion about extended feeding, self weaning, and the bitty sketch!) as I thought for a while it was his last feed, and it was such a lovely relaxed place to be.
Oddest place might well be under the stairs in a slightly faded posh hotel - not quite as bad as it sounds, it was a tucked away nook with a sofa in it ;) I didn't usually allow myself to be tucked away while feeding, but on this particular occasion we were having a meal with dp's father and in deference to him I asked the waitress if there was somewhere slightly more private I could go. (I'll add that he's incredibly supportive of breastfeeding, and I was never relegated to a bedroom at his house, rather given pride of place in the living room and brought a cup of tea!) She asked the manager who took me to this private sofa. The amusing thing about it, though, I realised once I'd got myself settled that while I was private on the ground floor, anyone coming down the stairs got a bird's eye view, slightly more revealing! :)
I've never pumped anywhere strange, per se, but I do pump strangely.
At my 10am pumping session at work, I hunker down in what is essentially a closet with a walkman and a magazine and I rest the bottles on my thighs and lean waaaaayyyy over. I can only imagine what an idiot I look like.
I used to pump with a coworker and it was so silly to sit across the floor from another woman and have a conversation while our nipples are being stretched 6 inches into clear plastic.
Before returning to work, I would nurse on one side and pump on the other but I would do it lying down and operate the pump with my foot. Pumping yoga as I like to call it!
I nurse proudly whenever an wherever. I am a "woman of size" and in some ways consider it my duty to make other women feel comfortable nursing- and the way to do that I think is to "normalize" it. I am not over the top about it - I have a friend who undoes her shirt buttons and fully exposes both breast - bra less- while tandem nursing...
I have nursed at funerals, weddings, a haunted hayride, the Ballet, countless Starbucks. The weirdest nursing experience that comes to mind is nursing in back seat of the car- my so in carseat, me on my knees on the seat twisted and bent ( and that's; just my breast) so he could nurse during a long drive on highway and no where to stop. Hurts just thinking about it.
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