Kirsten... I am new here... I hope it's okay to comment on this.

Bravo for all the work you have done!  I am one of those "sisters" in
nursing.  One would think that because I work for a hospital, of all places,
I would find more support with pumping.  After the birth of my first child,
I returned to work when he was 8 weeks old, bound and determined to pump and
maintain.  I found very, very little (if at times, NO) support at all.  I
worked 12 hour shifts on a very busy cardiac unit.  There were nights I
barely had to time to empty my bladder.  Yet, somehow, I managed to pump.  I
knew little about the intricasies of milk production at the time (just that
I wanted to make it) and I am actually GLAD I didn't know as much then.  I
used a manual pump at the time and because my baby was a frequent feeder, my
supply was great.  Most nights, the way I got my pump breaks was simply by
force.  I would get so engorged that I would say to my charge nurse, "I
don't have a choice anymore.  I'm leaking and in pain.  I need to go."  And
there wasn't much she could say.  And then it was a challenge to find a
CLOSE place to pump.  My breaks were very, VERY short and our pump room (at
the time) was the equivalent of two city blocks away.  I usually fought to
use an empty patient room for 20 minutes.

After my second was born, I was then working in a Level II nursery and found
the opposite... my coworkers asking me all the time, "Have you pumped yet?"
It was wonderful...and being a nursery, we had a pump room onsite.  I found
nothing BUT support for my pumping efforts.

I had not seen your website before, but it looks intriguing and I will
bookmark it and forward it to the myriads of other women I know who are
"pumping challenged" at work.  Thank you for your work!

Christina in WA

On 1/27/07, Kirsten Berggren <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> This is a favorite subject of mine, and I'm pleased to see it's come up.
> I think that there are very different issues at play here that break women
> into
> two groups - in the US called "white collar" and "blue collar". ... Middle
> class moms in rigorously scheduled jobs, like nursing and teaching, face the
> same challenges. They need
> protected time in their schedules...
> Kirsten Berggren, PhD, CLC
> www.workandpump.com

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