Breastfeeding exclusively 3-6 month old infant while WFH

[freddied]

@icantthinkofausername Wtf that’s horrible

 

[gnewsbob]

@wisper My husband is a SAHD, so he brings me the baby when he needs to eat. We try to avoid meetings. If it’s unavoidable due to my schedule, I cut my camera and cover it as a backup.

It’s faster than pumping, which I would otherwise need to do, and I don’t have to wash pump parts.

 

[katrina2017]

@wisper I exclusively breastfed + took care of my daughter while working from home full time for 10 months and it made me want to die. I don’t mean that lightly.

I’m not sure if you plan on having childcare or not but I would really really recommend it + pumping while you work. However if you are able to take breaks you may find it easier to just nurse instead of pumping but babies aren’t really hungry on a set schedule so it may be easier to just pull from a stash.

 

[papakinate]

@katrina2017 I don’t know how you did that. The few times he’s been home for extended periods because of sickness from daycare, I find it next to impossible to actually work.

One meeting I had to share my screen, take notes, and breastfeed during. It was one hour of hell I wouldn’t want to replicate again.

 

[bbarb]

@wisper Depends on the flexibility of your job. If you can be away from your desk at times without anyone noticing or caring, it could work. But what if you have a meeting that runs long and your baby decides he’s hungry?

 

[wisper]

@bbarb I think our team's culture and my particular job does actually support this, thankfully. Any guidance on how many hours we'll spend breastfeeding in that 3-6 month period?

 

[bbarb]

@wisper It’s hard to say. Every baby is different. Is he on a schedule or does he feed whenever he wants. Sometimes we become human pacifiers.

 

[mtucker08]

@wisper My niece works from home and has a sitter. She breastfeeds her daughter. Prior to starting back to work, she transitioned from breastfeeding on demand to a feeding schedule. She feeds the baby every 3 to 4 hours. The sitter has a bottle if she is delayed by work.

 

[sanjose1982]

@wisper I did this but with a slightly older baby. I WFH. When I went back to work, my husband went on leave. So we were all in the house together. I planned to pump once back at work but quickly realized it didn’t make any sense from a time management perspective. It took me 30 mins to pump and 15 mins to nurse. Not to mention all the cleaning of bottles/pump parts.

So I just nursed/breastfed and skipped the pumping. I kept it up when my husband’s leave ended and we hired a nanny. Slightly more awkward w a nanny but very doable. We made it to a year. I have pumped maybe a dozen times (eg when traveling).

That said, I think it worked because 1) we got baby on a schedule. That was doable because I went back to work when baby was closer to 5 months. Not sure how doable it would be at 3 months. You know your baby and how they’d handle a schedule 2) my job is very flexible. I blocked off 15 min slots on my work calendar. I fed her on our bed (side lying or sitting up) and answered emails or teams chats on my phone. I sometimes joined calls off camera while nursing, but baby found the computer screen very distracting so that didn’t work super well.

I’m not going to say it wasn’t totally distracting and disruptive to my work day. It was. But I still got my job done! Also, my husband had to then pick up slack in other ways. Like handling some of the evening chores so I could hop back on work email and make up for the time, if I felt I needed to.

 

[wisper]

@sanjose1982 Thank you! This sounds similar to my setup.

 

[sanjose1982]

@wisper Good luck!

 

[lsume]

@wisper Not sure how old your baby is now, but a 1-2 month old spends soooo much more time nursing than a 4-6 month old.
I had my first just before the pandemic. It wasn’t the plan but I went back to work 2 weeks after the world shut down, to WFH splitting shifts with my husband with no childcare.

It was extremely hard, but the nursing a baby while working was not the hard part. In the early months, it seemed like we spent all day nursing, but by the time I went back to work, it was like a 5-7 minute affair. It was very easy to stop and take 5-7 minutes to nurse her when she was hungry and my partner brought her to me during my working hours. I would text him to let him know when I had a meeting coming up, so I could feed her before or after. Occasionally I took meetings with my camera off while nursing but it didn’t have to happen often.

For me, nursing didn’t take more time than walking to the kitchen, getting a snack or a drink, and chatting with a coworker, which I wouldn’t think twice about doing often in the office. And she was nursing maybe every 2-3 hours so it wasn’t a ton of interruptions.

You just aren’t “nursing nonstop” anymore by the time baby is 4 months. (Maybe still a little at 3, the first month might be harder but still less than the newborn days).

 

[wisper]

@lsume

You just aren’t “nursing nonstop” anymore by the time baby is 4 months. (Maybe still a little at 3, the first month might be harder but still less than the newborn days).

Thank god! Nursing less than 10 minutes every 3 hours or so is less than the breaks I'd take for myself anyway. I think I'll adjust my expectations to be very low during his third month, though, just in case, but with the understanding that it'll be temporary. Will definitely be getting childcare, though.

 

[lsume]

@wisper I tell this to new mom’s so often: don’t base your expectations about nursing/pumping when you go back to work at 3-4 months on what it’s like at 4-8 weeks, because nursing changes soo much in those early months.
- you both learn how to nurse and latch more efficiently
- baby gets stronger and needs less help nursing
- baby’s tummy gets much bigger and they can hold much more milk in it, so they go longer between feeds
- your milk supply is well established so there is less cluster feeding

 

[noamx]

@wisper I went back to work at 5 months pp, though she was born a month early so 4 months age adjusted. I blocked time every 3 hours on my work calendar to pump, but in my head I knew I'd nurse as long as it was possible. Sometimes my husband (SAHD) had to give her bottles instead, in which case I'd pump.

Most of the time I ended up being able to nurse her. I would step away from my desk to do so.

It's important to note employers are required to give you time to pump, but not time to nurse. I kept it quiet that I was nursing instead of pumping most of the time. Which is dumb, because as she grew she got so fast at nursing and it took 5 minutes for her to eat vs 15-20 minutes to pump. Nursing vs pumping gave me a lot of time back in my work day. My job is mostly meetings and I am not comfortable pumping during a meeting I am leading.

 

[katrina2017]

@wisper I traveled for work twice a month when my baby hit 12 weeks. I pumped when traveling and pumped when WFH and breastfed the rest until he hit 13 months. I WFH the whole time with my second baby and just pumped at home. Not easy but doable

 

[vwynn]

@wisper I exclusively pumped from early on due to a hospitalization. Breastfeeding became much easier when I wasn’t pumping every 2-3 hours. I transitioned to every 6 hours around 2 months post partum, and this worked really well for me. By the time I went back to work just before 3 months pp, I would wake up at 6am and pump; then pump at noon on my lunch break; then pump at 6pm immediately after getting home; and, finally, I would go to bed around 9pm, wake up at midnight to pump, and go back to bed. I would sometimes feed my daughter while I was up at midnight, otherwise my husband did night feedings.

 

[mohamed1111]

@wisper If you don’t have calls and manage your time well I think you could nurse while WFH. If you have calls this just wouldn’t be possible. I WFH’d full time with my first baby in early Covid and my husband is a SAHD and I still had to pump because I had a lot of meetings. Sometimes I would pump during meetings and would just have my video off.

 

[annie09]

@wisper Childcare at home. That’s how this usually works

 

[jesusishere]

@wisper The end of my first mat leave coincided exactly with the Covid shutdown, so I did exactly this. By 3-4 months my kid was pretty predictable about feeds and I made sure to schedule my meetings with those in mind. If things ever went sideways, his caretakers could give him a bottle of pumped milk if absolutely necessary and I’d just pump at my next opportunity. It worked beautifully.