My return to work is drawing nigh. I was quite worried about this but now I feel differently. I am looking forward to a little less stress and the odd opportunity for downtime. It will also make a nice change to wee alone. I will of course miss my gorgeous children a lot, but I am fortunate to have a busy job that makes it unlikely I will think about them.
I took a year off on maternity with my son. This time I am returning after 8 months (largely to make my life easier at work). This means it is a rather different matter leaving my baby. My son was only feeding once a day when I left him. My daughter is mostly breastfed and just has little bits of food. So, it seems I am entering the world of expressing.
I have expressed before on occasion, but not regularly like I will now. However, the new realm for me is expressing in public. It's one thing getting my boobs out, which will inevitably be hidden by a baby's head. It's another to be milking myself. The truth is that I will have a secret room to go and lock myself away in, so nobody will see me. This is very important as I am a teacher and I would most likely get fired for that level of exposure.
I am a bit concerned about the noise of expressing. The click of the handle. When I know that just the other side of the door are hoards of screaming teenagers. I am also concerned about transporting my breast pump to and from my expressing room (in a closed cool bag I am thinking) without anybody knowing what I have been up to. And hiding the accoutrement's from my colleagues. It will also be interesting to see how much of a drain on my time it is, given that in the past I have chosen to work through all these breaks.
I am sure it will be fine. But I hadn't really thought about this side of the world of breastfeeding. Watch this space!
Be bold, my friend! You remember in Redborne how the teachers would smoke boldly in the teacher's common room, and that when we went to find one they never even bothered to hide their cigarette but would stand there with it hanging out of their mouths? They were shutting themselves away to do something quite harmful to their health and didn't give a darn; you're shutting yourself away to try and perform a natural function which is beneficial for your baby. If anyone asks what's in the bag, tell them. You might get some giggles at first, but people will get used to it and it will become more normalised for the children. Same thing when teachers get pregnant and their bellies begin to grow; there are a couple of giggles because the kids have figured out that : 'teacher had sex...at least once' but then it's normalised. Have fun at work expressing your boob juice -
ReplyDeleteVictoria xx