Going Back to Work

Smoothing the transition

There are two major components in preparing to return to work, whether you are virtual or in person. One is emotional, and one is logistical. 

Emotionally, it is often a complicated process. Be honest and gentle with yourself about how you are feeling. You may feel relieved, excited, scared, sad, nervous, or all of the above at the same time. None of the feelings are wrong! Share with your partner and friends who are in the same stage, or who have gone through this before. This is a great topic to discuss in the DCBD Postpartum Circles! Set aside time to take care of your mental health, whatever that looks like for you.

Logistically, this is also a big transition. Even if you’re not leaving the house, you’ll need to have a lot more things organized and prepared the night before than you have been used to doing. Start thinking through the processes that you typically follow on a daily basis both for your baby and for work in the weeks or days before going back to work and think about how you want to organize your time - what systems and tools will help you keep it all moving? 

• Often having duplicates of frequently used items like a pump, pumping parts and milk storage components can be a lifesaver. 

• If you are currently breastfeeding and transitioning to pumping, you’ll essentially be replacing nursing sessions that you would have been with your baby with a pumping session. Track when the nursing sessions are occurring to identify the pumping schedule you’ll be on. If those times work for you, great! If they’re not at a convenient time (taking place during a standing meeting, or during commuting time), you can nudge your baby 15 minutes a day towards the time of the schedule you want. 

• Consider pumping/nursing bras and clothes you’ll want to wear to facilitate pumping while at work.

• Be sure to have some nursing pads in case you are leaking more than usual away from your baby (some people find that the sound of a crying baby, or the thought of their baby can cause their full breasts to start leaking suddenly!). 

• If possible, take a few hours one day to do a dry-run, both with the child care provider to practice that transition without pressure, and practice going through the motions of your day to practice what you’ll need for pumping. It can be useful to make sure that there really is a plug where you expect one to be, that there’s not a window in an office that you forgot about, and that you have a fridge to store pumped milk.

Remember that you do not necessarily need to have a deep freezer full of pumped milk to be ready to go back to work. To prepare for the first day (let’s say it’s a Monday), you will need to have frozen milk to provide bottles for the number of feedings your baby would typically have during the hours you will be apart (or you will need to have enough formula to prepare bottles for those feedings). Whether you prepare the bottles ahead of time or not depends on your child care provider. 

During that Monday while you’re at work, you’ll be pumping the feedings you would normally have done with your baby. At the end of the day, you’ll take that freshly pumped milk home and put it in the refrigerator. Tuesday morning, you’ll take it to your childcare provider for the day. Tuesday at work, you pump the feedings again, bring the milk home at the end of the day again. This cycle repeats through the week until Friday evening when you put the pumped milk into the freezer, and continue to nurse your baby throughout the weekend.

When the next week starts, you’ll take the frozen milk from Friday out of the freezer, and continue pumping on Monday, and the cycle repeats again. As you can see, the only milk you needed to have prepared in advance was Day 1. Because you want to keep your milk supply up, and continue pumping the feedings when you are away from your baby, there wouldn’t be an opportunity to dig into a freezer stash, even if you had one. Most people will be more comfortable with more than one day of frozen milk, so you may want to have some extra put away to use for a date night or emergencies, but the point is that for returning to work, you don’t NEED it.

As you adjust to your new schedule, you can expect your baby to want to cluster feed in the evenings and even during the night. This is probably less about milk than about their desire to be close to you, for bonding and reassurance. Inasmuch as you are willing to do these extra feedings, they will be good for you each, for both milk supply and bonding. If you do not want to feed the baby those times, you can offer other ways to spend time together, such as baths, play, dancing to music and cuddles; you will likely both feel better for it!

We highly recommend the book Working and Breastfeeding Made Simple by Nancy Mohrbacher for anyone interested in this topic.

If you are one of our bundled clients, you may choose to use your hour of Infant Feeding Counseling to share and discuss your concerns about going back to work. We are here to help you think through any concerns you may have and find solutions.

~ Naomi, Infant Feeding Expert*

*If you need help to schedule your bundled Infant Feeding session with Naomi…email Elizabeth Parish.