Saturday, September 10, 2005

somebody, please stop me from yelling "IT'S A BREAST PUMP!"

So the working mom thing is actually going swimmingly. I dropped him off at day care and did not cry a single tear. (And then proceeded to feel exceedingly guilty: I mean, am I not the World's Worst Mother for NOT crying buckets of tears upon separating myself from my baby all day???") Anyway, I digress.

The only complication is that I am not only a working mom, I'm a still-nursing working mom. Which means that I lug around not just my laptop, purse, and the baby's day care bag, but also a pseudo-laptop-looking bag that contains my breast pump, along with an attractive little matching lunchboxy bag with an ice pack in which you store the milk. So, my shoulders are getting rather sore carrying all this gear around. But again, I digress.

It's funny, at first I though I'd be super discreet about the pumping thing. And I am, for the most part, but sometimes I pick up the pump and the lunch box bag, walk to the elevator and head up to the 6th floor where our company's Lactation Lounge is stationed. (And by Lactation Lounge, I mean a depressing, empty white office with individual sheets of 8 1/2" x 11" printer paper taped to the window. You know, for privacy. No one else calls it that; I have just nicknamed it the Lactation Lounge to make myself feel better.)

Digression.

Anyway, so while I'm lugging my dairy supplies around I always wonder which of the zillions of people I pass on the way to the Lounge know where I'm going. Some of the women, I'm sure, are onto me. But the clueless ones will smile and say "what brings you to our neck of the woods?" and I usually answer something like "just visiting!" or another perky inane comment. I fight the urge to say "Actually, I'm going into an empty office to take off my shirt, attach my nipples to this here machine and milk myself like a cow. Any questions?"

I have no idea why I feel this weird compunction to be so honest about it. I am such a private person in normal life and I don't really feel the desire to shock anyone. Maybe I just don't care anymore. I have experienced total desensitization.

BOOBS BOOBS BOOBS. See, it doesn't bother me at all. That's how I roll.