There are few people who have a tougher job than a mother to a new baby. But nowadays, a lot of new moms also have to work. If you’re working at home, one of the most troubling challenges can be finding the opportunity and space to breastfeed and to keep the milk supply up while working. Here are a few tips to help to get through the day without sacrificing your baby’s feed or your productivity.
Use your rights
Mom-guilt can get in the way of being the mother you need to be, or at least make us second-guess ourselves to some nasty emotional side-effects. Make sure that you don’t let it get in the way of your rights. If you work for an employer required to give you 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave, be willing to maximize it. Know that the break times that you need to express milk are protected by law, so you can’t be stopped from taking them.
Pump it up
While you want to be able to feed your baby straight from the breast as often as possible, you don’t want any milk to go to waste, so you should be pumping when you can. Instead of using cheap and rather inefficient manual pumps, look for some of the best electric breast pumps that can automate much of the process. Some are even hands-free so you can keep working while expressing.
Take good care of your milk
If you’re relying on a breast pump more often then you should also be careful to make sure that you’re protecting your milk as best as possible. Keeping it in a simple zip-lock bag can lead to leaks when chilled or frozen, and the plastic isn’t healthy for re-use. The best breast milk storage bags will address all those issues. You can store more milk for longer and keep re-using the same bags with the right care, meaning storage becomes much less of a concern.
Start your baby on the bottle soon
Breastfeeding is preferable to many when possible. However, you can introduce your baby to the bottle up to three to six weeks after their birth with too much problem. This can help them associate the bottle with feeding rather than just the breast. As such, it will be easier to feed them with milk you express and store rather than always have to do feed them directly.
Keep your express station at hand
If you’re working in a home office, you should be able to find the organized space to have your own supplies at all times. A good baby bag can help you take a lot of these with you if you have to go to meetings, too. You need plenty of clean bottles, hand sanitizer, and you might want to keep a cooler in the office so you don’t have to constantly march back and forth to the fridge in the kitchen.
Balancing breastfeeding and working from home can be tough. Keep the items you need on hand and take breaks when needed to pump milk.
