Let me explain.
I left for a trip to Vancouver, Canada for some (quasi-international) community organizer training with the IAF (Industrial Areas Foundation) for some local work I plan to do. While this was awesome, it was only the setting for what was to transpire.
It was I think the second day of training, and since I had not fully committed to the idea of weaning my 9-month old child (I really wanted fate to step in and decide it for me) I was committed to the idea of pumping at least three times a day to keep up my breastmilk supply. This means that at least three times a day (roughly at wake up, sometime midday, and before bed) I need to get out my charming little Obamacare provided Medela Pump In Style Advanced Breastpump Starter Set-Model # 57081 breastpump and all her accessories and find a standard socket in a semi-private space for at least 15 minutes, 20 if possible. This is not your momma's hand pump, ladies, this is serious suckage. I use only the highest suck setting, because I am a Boss (also because, well, that is the correct setting for me. The Boss setting.) The pump itself involves two sets of suction devices that are composed of a breastshield, a connector with undeniably-necessary plastic-flappy-bit-suction-maker, and what I lovingly call the boob-tube. It's basically a bottle.
And before I go any further, I need to note here that I am incredibly grateful for the ability and technology to be able to express and pump breastmilk. Yes, this is an instance where no other material other than plastic could probably do the job (well, may-ay-be glass and rubber. Maybe.) but moreover I'm grateful for the thousands of hours of research and development that determined how to make it work well--very well--and how to make it affordable for women. I'm also grateful for the billions of women before me who simply dragged their child along with them. You set the pace that occasionally leaving my baby might be possible. I knew that my mother and grandmothers had struggled with lactation and public life, and so I don't feel alone. I am aware of the privilege and first-world-problems of this post. I even want to explore them further. Later.
But all of that is to say that THIS, right now, is a production rather like an off-off-Broadway one woman show of COWS, which is like CATS, only more awkward. I have this glam kit packed in my purse, because I looked ahead at our schedule and saw a 30 minute break around 10am. "Perfect!" I thought, "I can pump and then not miss any of lunch or our lunchtime relational one-on-ones". (These are important, so I was scheduling around them.) The break comes. I ask our host, Michael, if he knows where I might find a secluded location with a socket. I've already checked out the rest rooms, they do not have sockets.
*NORMALLY I would pitch a little fit about not making food in a public restroom, but in this case I was thousands of miles away from my child and sacrificing enough to just keep up this level of lactation. In this case I was planning a pump-and-dump (that's a term for ditching your milk, not pumping while pooping--you're so gross for thinking that) so I wouldn't have minded.
** I DID mind one person's repeated inquires as to why I wasn't freezing my milk or giving it to orphans--no, I am not making this up--but oblique references to trying to navigate customs with a gallon of breastmilk "I swear it's mine officer" or overt references to "I'm not even from this country," and "I don't think anyone has a right to any part of my body without my consent" didn't seem to make much difference. Oh well.
Michael proudly exclaims that "they" are a breastfeeding family too, and sweetly offers his office--unfortunately, it's about 5 buildings away, on the third floor. I've already proven my ability to get lost within an acre of space, so I ask for something a little closer. We walk upstairs--the classroom is inexplicably locked. We find the gender neutral bathroom--no plugs. We go to the First Nations lounge: the offices are locked. I step inside ANOTHER bathroom to check for plugs, and I lose Michael. I spend several minutes looking for him, get lost (told you!) and find my way back to our plenary room.
The break is over. Michael chirps, "Did you find what you needed?" "NO." I reply, "But I'm FINE." "You don't look fine."
I am not fine. This happens ALL THE TIME. You can't find someplace to go, and you're going to miss even MORE of the public discourse that you are there to participate in, and then you KNOW you've got to pump, because even if there isn't a baby in front of you right now, if you don't pump, you won't make more, and that's not even considering the rather excruciating pain of overfull breasts.
Do you know what that feels like? I imagine--not being a man of course--that it's a little like having blue balls, only instead of them being a private, night time (I'm assuming here) affair in your pants, they are large, sweaty, public issues right in the front of your everything wherein your usually lovely soft breasts become hard angry coconuts of displeasure, and every flounce causes a twinge of agony. Plus your bra suddenly doesn't fit AT ALL and your nipples get all hard and that's a whole other problem. I'm only speaking for myself here. Me, and all the other women in the whole entire world who need you to know that. Probably your mom.
So I'm standing in the middle of the room, watching my colleagues top off their coffee and get snacks, holding my stupid breastpumping supplies and deciding whether that hot feeling in my face is tears, anger, frustration, shame, indignation, self-righteousness or an unpleasant combination of all that. I use cuss words in my head. I whisper them as well. I might have said one of my favorites aloud.
And I realize, this is my moment. I can either walk out of here and shamefully find a place to hide and pump, or I can participate in this public event that good money has paid for like a fully adult woman and pump while I do so. These are my only two options.
I gird my loins. Metaphorically. I march up to the trainer, and in a voice that only quivers a teeny bit announce, "I have not been able to find a place to pump my breasts. May I pump here?"
And she says, "Would you like to address the class?" No I m_____f___ing would not like to ask permission from the class, but sure. If we're going to test the very fabric of this liberal bastion then let's test it right. "Yes please."
"Hey. Hey everybody? Hey! Um. Hi. I haven't been able to find a place to use my breast pump during the break, and I'm not willing to miss any more of this training, so do you mind if I just plug in and pump over there in the corner? I'm pretty discreet; no one will have their delicate eyes harmed by the sight of my breasts." (reading that, I sure demurred a lot.)
There is a pause, just long enough for all the air to be sucked out of the room, before folks fall over themselves in assent (Canada!). And I hear, "Yes!" and "Of course!" and "Do you have to be in the corner?" and "Do you even have to ask?" To that one, I did respond. "OF COURSE I have to ask, do you even live in the same world?" To which she replied, "I breastfed my daughter until she was two, I totally understand." To which I hotly thought, yes, you have totally asked a roomful of strangers for permission to touch your boobs in their vicinity. It's like the same thing.
I can't quite describe how fraught this was for me. I was doing what I needed to do, but OH how this was transgressing all the things I'd sworn were not big deals to transgress, because we are 21st century women who can have it all, but I was actually having to think things like "breathe normally" and "don't cry" and "I can do this. I am a rockstar. I can do this." I was working very hard at looking serene and confident.
So I did. I turned my back on the room, plugged in my extractor--I mean expressor--and hooked up all the bitty plastic pump parts, including the wretched tubing which always looks dirty, even if you've just cleaned it, because it manages to extract moisture from the very air. I gave sweet thanks to merciful Jesus for loving his own mother enough to have me wear my cute easy-access sweater that day, and truly, once attached, no one could see anything. But GADS how I wished I'd ever gotten one of these:
Can we digress just a moment to talk about the utter insantitty of this picture for a moment? Just to note that this model has itty bitty boobies (not in itself objectionable) on what is meant to be a lactating juggernaut of self determination? Don't give me sassy eyes, show me how those little bottles are going to successfully hang off these bouncing mammarous mountains! When I fill those bottles to the brim, how will calamitous gravity NOT cast my hard-won trophies upon the floor (or worse, on my pants, milk stains are SO hard to get out of clothing)?
There is nothing about this picture that I can imagine emulating...
except that I really wanted to be wearing one in this precise moment. 'Nuff said.
SO. I do the thing. I plug myself in like a cow and wrench life-juice from my boobs, in public, before strangers, in another country. I take a deep breath. I can do this. I AM doing this. It will be one hell of a story. With one arm I hold up the bottles against my chest (this is a learned maneuver, very useful), and with my other hand I begin to take notes. And then I take stock of the situation. About three minutes have passed since my announcement.
End Act I.
Act II.
Hmm. Things continue to progress, I see. My colleagues were aligned in a circle of rolling chairs around the main presenter, casually spaced from one another to afford easy access to the snacks. While I've been hooking up, they have literally formed ranks. Where once there was open space between people, folks are now touching elbows. I could have missed the request to pull closer though, it could be my imagination that everyone, including those still facing me, are quite studiously avoiding even glancing in my direction. It is as though the cardinal direction of East were forbidden to their eyes. Fine. Whatever. It's a lecture.
The soft "whrrrrrr, whmp. whrrrr, whmp" of the pump is plainly audible. Like I said, Boss setting.
But then the trainer deviates from previous sessions, and asks us to get into pairs. Oh shit. Oh, I know! Tracy! Tracy the beautiful environmentalist, she's also a doula! She won't be weirded out! She'll be my partner! So while folks are doing that weird eye-glancing ritual to catch the attention of someone you don't find distasteful, I say loudly (because she's clear across the room), "Tracy!" Doesn't hear me. "Tracy!" Still nothing. "TRA-cy!" No. She...she can't hear my voice.
And this is the worst moment, just the utter worst, when I realize that maybe they can't see OR hear me. So I yell. I actually shout, "YO TRACY!! TRACY!" Absolutely no response from the entire group. No one so much as flits their eyeholes towards me to acknowledge this breach of protocol, this maniacal shouting in the midst of civil discourse.
Honestly, it almost undoes me. So really, really? No one can see or hear me while I'm pumping? I mean I get wanting to grant me privacy, but how is this conspiracy even possible? Tears start to form in my eyes and I can feel that hot flush up my cheeks--you know, the one that crinkles behind your ears and makes the scalp prickle with shame? You last felt it in middle school. You hated it.
But right behind that feeling was a still, small voice that told me "You are in m____f__ing community organizer training. Get yourself heard." Yes ma'am! I told the voice of the Spirit, who cusses like a sailor when I need her to, and so I turned to the pair nearest me, Margaret and Brian. Margaret is a pastor. We've bonded. She won't be weird. Brian works with homeless medical patients. We've bonded too. Excellent.
"Margaret. MARGARET." Dammit. "Brian. BRIAN. HELLO? GUYS?? ANYONE??!"
It was like orbiting earth from space without contact to NASA. I realized that the only way out of this twilight zone was to physically move myself closer and touch their bodies. So I started scooting.
Scootch. "Guys". Scootch. "Hey, ya'll" Scootch. "Ya'll can totally hear me now right? I am literally right next to you. YA'LL. YA-ALL" (I think my accent came out by the end of this.) And I poked Margaret in the arm. Maybe a bit hard. "Can I get in on this? I've been left out." "Oooh, sorry," she says, totally like a Canadian, "We didn't want to bother you."
--a pause to breath. Thank you Lord.--
"Yes. So I see. Well, thank you, but I don't want to be left out."
And we went on., me pumping, them carefully making eye contact. I made a point later in the day of telling Margaret and Brian and Tracy about their inability to hear me, and they genuinely didn't. I don't think it was intentional at all. They too were shocked that I couldn't be heard. It was quite the puzzle.
But here's the thing: I stepped WAAAAY outside of my own comfort zone, and I know that despite the protestations of how normal and ok it was--and IS, I will claim--I was well outside the comfort zone of pretty much every person in the room. It's probably a testament to Canadian hospitality that they wanted to be welcoming and affirming, that my request was only met with assent and permission. But I become aware very quickly of the toll it took on me personally. Instantly I grew a pounding headache, and tension snaked through my body. Every inch of me hurt, and in all honesty I was too stressed out to do a good pumping; I only got about 2 ounces. Usually I get almost 5. But I also felt like I'd taken an important stand for something--the right to feed one's child. Mine might be a thousand miles away, but he needed me to take care of myself, and for me to be a whole and complete person in that moment, I had to walk an extremely uncomfortable line between my public and private life. If I had gone to find a private spot, even gone back to my hotel room, I wouldn't have made the stand that this private act WAS intensely public, in that it is a "right" so many of us claim to support and are seldom challenged to do so.
I know there are other, more amazing women who pump on the subway with their battery powered hand bags, and women who protest inequality with nurse-ins, but I was my own hero that day. It got done. Frankly, I scoured that conference schedule and studiously avoided having to pump in public again--our last day, when I was already out of the hotel, I asked the college bookstore if there was a quiet spot I could pump, and they kindly directed me to a corner of the warehouse. Not the greatest, but a genuine and unflinching offer. I thanked them then and I thank them now.
My point is this: I don't think non-lactating people know how much work it is to try to do "the best thing" for a baby. I would go stark mad as a stay-at-home mom, even as I know how fulfilling and awesome it is from friends who have that capacity. I don't. I'm trying to do it all, and I LIKE doing it all. I love working, I love being a mom and wife, I love it all and I'm happiest juggling it. I will try my best to make it all work together, but dammit, it is WORK--muscle aching, mind blowing, conceptually stretching work that is not often recognized by pretty much anyone except other nursing moms and our partners. Even a progressive university like Capilano was unprepared. What would a woman less aggravating, less bold than I have done?
She'd have suffered. She will suffer. She is probably suffering right this second.
If my act could in any way prevent that for one other mother, it was worth it. No. Scratch that.
It was worth it for me. It showed me my own power. My own resolve.
And if I do say so, it was just a little bit funny. And maybe even holy. I'm always caught off guard when the most revolutionary thing I can do is just be a woman, to just be me. And as a pastor, all of this has funny shades and haloes, wings and fires, because I never know what's going to shove me off the pedestal and into real ministry. One night over drinks a young woman told me that she was sorry I'd taken my collar off after the organizing action we'd been a part of, because she'd invited a friend to see me. SEE me, because as she put it, "I'm fan-girling so hard. You're like a cool pastor and a woman and you wear boots and a leather jacket and you've got a nosering and you don't care what people think about you." Oh, sweet heaven, were that true. But if YOU think it might be, if that gives you confidence and opens doors you thought were closed, yes. Yes I am.
God bless us all, this is a strange world. Hope you understand.
-Marie
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