I breastfed three children.  With #1 I went back to work (teaching, taking
classes) when she was 3 days old, and yes, she went with me, and no, I
didn't ever pump milk or give her formula.  She breastfed for 4 years.

Number 2 was the one with all the problems on both his and my part.  I used
the hospital's pump to try to establish a milk supply while he was in the
NICU and couldn't have anything by mouth (until his intestinal surgery).
You couldn't rent or buy pumps back then (1985).  He breastfed for 4 months.
I went back to work when he was 3 months old.

With #3, I went back to work (teaching) when he was 3 weeks old, and yes, he
often went with me, and I did hand express enough milk for one bottle, two
days a week, for the first six months.  It took about 5 minutes of hand
expression, first thing in the morning, to get a bottle of milk. He
breastfed for 5.5 years.

Nobody taught me how to hand express.  But I had experience milking goats!

I certainly don't think mothers need to "stay at home" in order to
breastfeed.  In truly baby-friendly cultures where breastfeeding is the
cultural norm, mothers go about their daily lives, including all sorts of
work inside and outside the home, and their babies go along.

Katherine A. Dettwyler, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Nutrition
Texas A&M University