Women in academia.

[rivka]

I just called the Institute director's assistant.

"Uh, hi, Beth, this is Dr. Rivka calling about the Faculty Retreat. This may not be a situation that's come up before, but I have a nursing baby at home, and so I'm going to need to pump milk during the retreat."

"Oh!" Beth sounds flustered. "No, that hasn't ever come up before. Oh. Um, well, I guess that when you need to, you just excuse yourself and go pump."

"I'm going to need a private place with an electrical outlet."

"I don't know if any of the bathrooms have electrical outlets..." The retreat is held at an old mansion that's been converted to a conference center. I wouldn't normally be willing to pump in a bathroom, but I know that the bathrooms in this place aren't grungy at all. If they have outlets.

"Yeah... should I call the conference center?"

"No." Now she sounds much more assured. "You know what, you can go into a bedroom and lock the door."

"I won't be staying overnight." Many of the faculty do, but I have always resisted.

"That's okay, we can still make one of the women's dorm rooms available to you. We can definitely make that happen. Just, when you get to the conference center find me and we'll set it up."

"Thanks." I wanted to say, did not dare to say, and hope I didn't need to say: Please don't mention this to Dr. Gallo or any of the other [male, it goes without saying] senior faculty.

I hate feeling awkward about this.

Comments

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

Try not to feel awkward! You did a good thing.

[mizchalmers.livejournal.com]

I worked from when my daughters were 7 weeks and 13 weeks respectively, and I breastfed them both for over a year, so I pumped. A lot. I carried my Medela in a little brown suitcase that looked so much like a clarinet case that a colleague assumed that's what it was, until I corrected him. He was mortified.

A few years later he said: "You were so diligent! You carried that thing around with you every day!"

I said: "I think you are unclear on the biology."

I'm a bit of a scorched-earth working mother. Men make me feel uncomfortable every day, so I don't mind embarrassing them to death every once in a while.

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

It's ridiculous that anyone would be mortified at the idea of pumping milk. I know it's common, but it says a lot about our culture that it is.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I remember seeing something in an advice column recently where a woman had written in, aghast, to complain that a coworker was leaving sealed bags/bottles of breastmilk in the office fridge without hiding them in paper bags to protect people's sensitivities. The advice columnist agreed that this was horribly unprofessional.

The kicker? The woman who wrote in to complain said that she had nursed and pumped for her own kids. She just, you know, showed a proper sense of shame about what she was doing.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

Oh, holy shit. My younger daughter is 28, and I traveled in Japan for two weeks when she was three months old. With a theater company. On a bus. I pumped in the back of the bus.

Okay, I'm looking at this and realizing it's sort of a long story. Let's just say I would have hoped that nearly 30 years later "sensitivities" would be a little more... mature? *sigh*

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yeah, no freaking kidding.

Here, I found it (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2008/07/13/where_breast_milk_shouldnt_go/). It was Ms. Conduct, whom I usually like. Grr.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I said: "I think you are unclear on the biology."

Hee!

I once saw someone complain on LJ that if women wanted to pump milk for their babies they should do it at home, outside of work hours. And she wasn't being sarcastic.

[ailbhe]

Thank you for doing this. Maybe one day you will feel less awkward, but Alex and Linnea and Emer stand a good chance of feeling absolutely entitled and not awkward at all because of you and women like you.

[redbird]

Considering that she didn't want you calling the conference center, I doubt she'll say anything to Dr. Gallo or, indeed, anyone except possibly the person in charge of dorm room allocations.

And yes, it's annoying that people make you feel awkward about this.

[cassandre.livejournal.com]

Good for you! I'm a little surprised that you mind senior colleagues finding out, though. There's nothing embarrassing about what you're doing. It's normal.

That said, I do recall bringing my baby to a department coffee hour once to show him off, and at a certain point he got fussy and I put him on the breast, and the older male colleague who was sitting next to me visibly froze and starting making rather amusing attempts to stare everywhere in the room apart from at my bosom. I think it was the fact that I was still chatting with him that made him uncomfortable (yes, I can breastfeed and carry on a conversation at the same time! women are super-geniuses that way!). That said, he was someone of a much older generation, about to retire.

Hooking up the pump and expressing milk in front of colleagues, I would never do. Saying, "See you in a few minutes, I've got to go express some breastmilk now" seems fine to me.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

This is a very, very male environment. And the retreat in particular tends to be full of sophmoric frat-boy stuff because they're letting their hair down. I could see someone making a public comment he thought was funny. I mean: I am the first lactating woman who has ever come to the faculty retreat. That tells you something right there.

I am very comfortable nursing in public, and have had nothing but hospitable responses. (Although I did get the dirtiest look from a seven-year-old girl at the playground this afternoon, but maybe she just didn't know what was happening.)

I had a fun experience when Colin was about twelve weeks old. I flew to Boston just with him, which meant sitting next to strangers all the way on the plane instead of having Michael or Alex next to me as a buffer. I wasn't sure how that would go, in such close quarters. But it just so happened that a number of Boston schools had graduation that weekend and the plane was full of older parents in a nostalgic, kid-loving frame of mind. They were delighted to have a nursing mother of an infant on their plane. Delighted. I heard so many "aww, when mine were nursing..." stories. It was really sweet.

[cassandre.livejournal.com]

This is a very, very male environment.

Right, I see. It occurred to me after I posted that maybe I was being presumptuous in saying "I'm surprised that you would mind them knowing", because I didn't really know what kind of environment you were talking about. I am in the humanities, too, so maybe they are a bit more open-minded than science types? I don't know.

It's great that you breastfeed in public and haven't received criticism for it. I confess to being one of those crazy extended breastfeeders who has still not entirely given up nursing my 4 1/2 year old. I don't nurse him in public any longer, though.

[tchemgrrl.livejournal.com]

You may feel awkward about it, but I really appreciate your *writing* about feeling awkward about it. It means that I'm a bit more mentally prepared when put into a similar position (not "if", unfortunately; I can't picture sophomoric jokes but I can picture incredible awkwardness).