Puget Sound Mom

Recently I wrote a newspaper blog about rules and rights surrounding breast-pumping at work. In that post I gave advice to mothers going back to work after having a baby, and I touched on my own experience. But I didn’t get to tell the full story. So here it is.

View From the 19^th Floor

I could barely get the words out when the facilities manager, Jerry, answered his phone. “Whatcha need?” he asked in his smooth, 20-something voice.

“Uh, yes. This is, uh, Natalie Singer. I’m a reporter for the newspaper working in a suite on the 19^th floor? Well, I’m just returning to the office here after my maternity leave and my editor at the main building suggested I contact you about a, um, … “ I paused and swallowed, then took a deep breath, “a building services issue.”

“Sure, sure, what can I help you with?” Jerry purred.

“I need to see if there’s an extra space – a room, or, uh, closet or something that I can make use of.”

“Ok, will you need to reserve it on a regular basis, or is this just a one-time meeting? And do you need electric hookup?”

How did I get into this? I wondered. Well, first, there was that one night last November when the Green Rider and I …

But this, the facilities issue, this should have been at least partly my supervisors’ problem. Over at our company’s main office, they had a pumping room for mothers. Unfortunately, I was stuck on the other side of downtown in a leased, pin-sized satellite office I shared with two co-workers, trapped in a high-rise crawling with all manner of hallway-strutting alpha males. The satellite office had no private space, no proximity to Human Resources, no options for me. I was just returning from six months’ maternity leave. My boobs were still leaky manufacturing plants, and my boss had winced as soon as I mentioned the words “milk” and “pump” in the same sentence. Talk to the building managers over there, he said, maybe they can help you.

So here I was. “It’s going to be a regular event,” I muttered over the phone to Jerry. “Every day. Twice a day, actually. Sometimes three. I, uh, need somewhere to pump my breasts.” I could hear the slow smile spreading across Jerry’s face. “Aha,” he said. “Ok, now. I’ll be right up, Ms. Singer.”

***

If you’ve never seen or used a breast pump, let me be the first to tell you, it’s a scary contraption — very medical-looking, kind of how I imagine it would be to carry a portable dialysis machine in your purse.

There’s a rectangular box that contains the motor, on the outside of which are two dials: One that controls the speed at which the machine sucks, and the other that adjusts the force of said suckage. Running from the motor box are two clear flexible tubes that attach, on the other end, to the flanges: hard plastic funnels that fit over the breasts, yanking, with repeated pump-powered motion, the woman’s ever-purpleing nipple into a quarter-sized tunnel with considerable discomfort, thereby extracting milk into an attached bottle.

I resented the fact that I had to use this contraption in the first place, probably because I partly resented having to leave my baby for a 45-hour workweek quite so soon (I was lucky, though, compared to others, to have had six months of maternity leave) … but I needed the career in order to keep the baby alive. She couldn’t live on my milk forever. Pretty soon we’d need to be buying a steady stream of super burritos, industrial-sized Goldfish cartons and designer soda six packs.

And I liked breastfeeding. I wanted to continue, and I needed to pump to do so.

Despite being grateful, I was not so impressed when the ever-complimentary Jerry unlocked the door to the abandoned office suite he had secured for my clandestine acts of survival.

Whatever company had once occupied this sweeping office had clearly been knocked out cold by the downed economy: The multi-room suite was empty of all furniture except for a dirty mini-fridge on the floor with a broken door swinging from the hinge. The scuffed walls were bare, the sea-foam carpet stained with toner and coffee. In the middle of this windowless, fluorescent-lit central room was a lone metal chair, circa 1952.

Did I mention there was no heat?

Jerry said my breasts and I could steal into the suite as long as it stayed vacant.

“Good luck,” Jerry winked, handing me the square brass key to my new kingdom.

***

For the first few months, I tried to settle into that cold, empty office twice a day. I earnestly made notes and phone calls as the pump squeak squeak squeaked like a whiny donkey, conscious of maintaining my work time despite these daily sessions away from my desk. Once I interviewed the mayor of Seattle about crime statistics while eight inches below the telephone mouthpiece a four-o’clock feeding slowly trickled.

But as the weeks went by, and as my fatigue increased — working, caring for a baby at home, and endless dull sessions in that abandoned office were taking their toll — so did I become emboldened.

One day, instead of setting up in the middle of the suite’s exposed wasteland of copier ink stains and winter drafts, I wandered into a small back office. It was clearly the best room in the house, almost cozy in an abandoned sort of way, with full-length windows looking out over 4th Avenue in downtown Seattle. I briefly imagined the boss who used to reside here, gazing at his or her minions through the glass walls.

I peered out the back windows and down to the street, 19 stories below. Suddenly, free from the disorienting blankness of the central room, I saw endless distractions: The tourist scurrying out of the taxi, the lawyers marching in lockstep through the puddles to the courthouse, the street people with their purple dreadlocks and overflowing shopping carts zigzagging like wayward ants. The Seattle winter sky was at once gray and light; the building skins shone black and silver, reflecting the clouds. There was so much to see from this work tower that I never stopped to see before.

Pushing back questions of propriety, I pulled the metal chair right up to the window and unbuttoned my blouse. I told myself that no one would be able to see me from down below, or even from a neighboring building through all that thick commercial glass. And so what if they could, I thought, settling into my new location. I pulled out my notebook and my pump began its soft donkey whine. I put my nose to the glass. Outside the silent, busy world rushed by.

That fall after my baby turned 1, a few weeks before I finally packed up my pump for good with a sense of bittersweet, I ran into Jerry coming out of the elevator. “Hey there,” he said warmly, with a knowing look and an extra friendly smile. “How’s that meeting room been treating you?”

“It’s perfect,” I murmured, adjusting over my shoulder the breast-pump in its secretive black case as the elevators doors slid together between us. “Just perfect.”