WOHM | spelhouseLove

Pumping at Work

Oh, just the thought of this hellish experience makes me want to avoid any activity that could possibly result in the creation of another human being. Pumping at work was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I took a five month maternity leave with Amari, from August 2 to January 2. When I returned to work, there was no place for me to pump because I did not have an office. I definitely regret not moving into an empty office when the opportunity existed. A dear friend and former co-worker told me to move in and ask for forgiveness later, but I naively ignored his advice.

As a result, I found myself asking to borrow his office to pump in because there was no clean place to pump. The super ignorant and ridiculous HR manager asked me to pump in the bathroom. Oh the ignorance! She even had the gall the say, “but I thought pumps were self contained”!!! As a result of not pumping for an entire day, I came home to find that I did not have enough milk for a full nursing and Amari was still starving, so I gave him formula for the first time.

He broke out in hives along his body and had projectile vomiting. I was through. The next day I marched into work and demanded that a private, clean pumping space was created. Within 48 hours there was an annex in the woman’s bathroom, partitioned off by sheet rock. It had a door that locked from the inside, a freshly steamed couch, a table, magazines and an outlet. This was much, much better.

Unfortunately, this was not the case for the the poor ex-Isotoner employee who was recently fired for taking too many pumping breaks. I will never buy Isotoner again. My experience consisted of me trying to locate a place to pump everyday, but I never felt like my job was on the line for disappearing for 15 minutes during lunch. I probably should have been pumping three times, minimum two times a day while at work, but fitting in one session was hard enough.

I hated that my life revolved around a 3-4 hour lactation clock, and I did not even get to enjoy the intimacy of breastfeeding my baby. Yes, I got to breastfeed Amari in the morning and again when I returned home from work, but dragging around my mechanical baby, aka my Avent double electric pump, was making me spite the blessing that breastfeeding was meant to be.

I was glad that after me, the 100 or so other female employees that worked in the plant now had a place to pump if and when they needed one. Unfortunately, it required me to make a bit of a scene in order to get my totally clueless HR manager to take some action.

October 20th, 2009 • Gadget, Motherhood, Pregnancy, WOHM, Wife.

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Temper Tantrum

Last night was hopefully one of a kind. Hubby started a new rotation and he is working in New York City. This means he leaves in the morning before everyone wakes up, and he comes home usually after the boys’ bedtime.

Amari has not taken kindly to this and has showed his disapproval in the form of acting out. The scapegoat issue was an insufficient a bowl of dried cranberries. I put some in a bowl, and he, with full attitude demanded that more be added. Because of how he asked, I told him he could not have ANY cranberries.

This news sent him into an emotional breakdown. Tears, kicking, screaming, and irrational demands resulted in forty-minutes of stress and headache for me. By the grace of God, I read this site the previous day, and was reminded how blessed I am to have children, no matter their temperament. I was able to keep my cool and not raise my voice or change my tone even once while trying to calm Amari.

I had never seen him this hysterical, and it tore my nurturing heart to bits to hear how much he missed daddy. We spent all summer together with the boys, and this week hubby has only seen the boys a handful of hours. Is it worth it to have two full-time working parents? There is no better substitute for mom and dad, my friend Vinny C. told me, and I agree. No private school and not even the best nanny, can do all the things a child needs from their parent.

I hope hubby and I can get through this adjustment period and still be able to give our children what they need spiritually, mentally and emotionally, and go above that and give them what the love, which is our undivided time and attention.

October 15th, 2009 • Children, Fatherhood, Gadget, Motherhood, WOHM.

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2 Years, 2 Kids, 2 MBAs was Easy Compared to This

I’m three weeks into my new job and whenever I tell the story about how hubby and I attended business school together with two kids I have to explain that it was not so tough, because we had Marina Poppins, and she was the best ever. In the past 21 days I have become totally amazed by all working mothers. I mean, I know I worked after I returned from maternity leave in 2007, but that seems like eons, no, light years ago and our family was 25% smaller at the time. I don’t remember the pangs of dressing small bodies in the morning, or fixing breakfast, or packing lunches, or really any of it. But then again, I hardly remember how painful childbirth was.

You know on TLC, after a first-time mother sees her precious beautiful miracle for the first times she sheds tears of joy? That was not me. Of course, I selflessly, unconditionally love my children, but my first thought after I saw Amari was ‘he’s going to be an only child.’ Because I am never ever ever eva doing that again. So, with time, memory fades, and thus, I cannot remember feeling so burdened as a working mother years ago. I do not feel the guilt that so many moms say they experience. I am overjoyed to return working. I love what I am doing and where I am so, and I would not trade that to spend all day with my sons right now.

Whoa, yes, I just said I would rather be at work than playing, cuddling and kissing my boys all day. And there is a very logical reason for that. There are many, many things that come with the blessing slash chore of being a stay at home mom. The past two years at NYU I had so much flexibility that I had the best of both worlds, and now I am slave to the ‘get-through-the-day-so-that-you-can-get-ready-for-tomorrow’ task masking.

I woke up at 5:55 and hit the snooze button one time too many. After getting showered and dressed, it was 6:50 and then it was on to the boys. I got them dressed, took Amari to the potty, brushed his teeth, put oil on his hair, and then began all over again with Joshy. I changed it diaper, which thank God was just number 1, wait no, it was a number 2 this morning, got him dressed and then packed him in the stroller.

I put ice packs in the lunch boxes hubby packed the night before and then grabbed my laptop bag and headed for the car. It takes about 10 minutes to walk from our apartment door to the car and get both boys strapped into their carseats. We headed to daycare, and then parked and unstrapped, got the lunches and headed inside. I got Joshy and Amari set up at a table to eat breakfast (oh yeah, I put two bananas and cinnamon rasisin bagels into their bags before we left home). While they started their day off with a wholesome meal, I filled out their daily status forms, changed the sheet in Joshy’s crib and then initialled the sign in sheet.

By now it’s 8:10 and traffic on the Merritt is thicker than I would like. At 5:03 PM I head back to the car to do the reverse of everything I did this morning, except it’s the Thursday before Labor day, so traffic is really bad, and I’m not going to be there by 6, so I exit off the Merritt to trek through the back roads of North Stamford to make it to the daycare by 5:48. We get home (after a car ride full of questions about where’s daddy and where’s Traci), and daddy’s home! Woohoo! He fixes dinner while I finish a sell deck for work, and then I feed Joshy some spaghetti (with jerk – it was nasty, don’t do it). I put on a movie for Gadget and then head downstairs to exercise because I have not felt sweat drip down my face in the past seven days. And now I’m writing this post and it’s 10:34. I still have to shower and put up the dirty dishes. So what didn’t get done today? No one bathed the boys, but we did lay out their clothes for the week on Sunday.

And I will repeat this routine tomorrow.

September 3rd, 2009 • 2 Years 2 Kids 2 MBAs, Children, Health & Fitness, Marriage, WOHM, Wife.

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First Days

This month lots of new things happened in our lives. Hubby and I will return working full time and the boys have already begun going to daycare. Amari is in preschool and gets so excited about it the night before that he can’t sleep. Joshy does alright, but I’m sure he would rather crawl over daddy and go swimming.

I started working last week. I am a Marketing Manager for a global tea brand. I was recalling how much of Amari’s life I have worked, and the answer is not much. I think I’ve only worked 6 months out of the three years of his life. Between maternity leave and business school, our boys have had a monopoly on our time.

So, two weeks ago was the first day of school for the boys. Everything went fine for them. And everything went fine for me until it was time for pick up. When hubby and I entered the daycare Amari was excited to see us and Joshy was LOUDLY expressing his discontent. I came over to him, expecting outstretched arms, but instead he gave me a neutral expression. I held him and squeezed him to let me know that we had indeed come back for him, but he was nonchalant at the most.

As I was gathering his lunch box, daddy must have appeared because I heard Joshy shrill, yell “BaBa!” and run with arms outstreched towards hubby. Wow! What a response for the man that did not carry that baby for nine months and then labor to bring him into the world. I have to say that I was very disappointed about Joshua’s reaction to seeing me. This feeling did not mean that I was jealous of hubby. I am overjoyed at the closeness, initimacy and strength of their father son relationship.

My heart was just a little bit crushed, but I can take it in stride. My cape came in the mail today (that is my supermom cape), so I can chin up and keep moving.

August 25th, 2009 • Children, WOHM.

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