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[quote=Anonymous]I never imagined that I'd be in this situation but I'm really struggling with pumping at work. I work for the federal government and until I went on maternity leave, had my own office. I'm a senior, non-supervisory employee in a small office. While I was gone, we moved buildings and no longer have an office, so I use our work lactation room, on a different floor. The policy is first come first serve and there are only a few other women using the pumping room. You can choose whether or not to share the room, but most of us don't know each other and take the room for 15-30 mintues at a time including cleaning and storing items (you can't leave pumps or other things in the room).

The issue is my work schedule. I have a job where I am on the phone or in team meetings for 85% of the day. It is typical for coworkers who telework or even those who work in the building to call into team meetings. I have tried to work my pumping schedule around my set calls (determined by the states and tribes I work with as recurring monthly meetings) and team meetings. We often have back to back team meetings from 1 pm to the end of the day. Often when I go to the lactation room it is occupied by another colleague and I need to come back. There have been a few times when I needed to pump while we were having a team meeting. I always brought my blackberry and called into the meeting and came immediately to the meeting. If this is going to occur, I've tried to let my program manager know in advance that I would be calling in and coming to the meeting.
 
Today my manager said "you really need to get your time management with pumping under control."

I explained to her that the lactation room was occupied at the times that I didn't have meetings and that other women have the discretion to allow others access. There are only a few other ladies using the room.

In response, she said, "you know I support you pumping. Now you should go pump (our call ended early) as it's distracting when you have to call into our team meetings".

I don't work from home, am always on time, get my work done and have been maybe taking two 15 minute breaks--and not in addition to a break.

I explained to her that I was trying my best, but it just so happened that the other women and I were on the same schedule and we had even tried to coordinate. Until recently, I was pumping in a coworkers office and reserving empty conference rooms. I've even brought a hand pump for situations like this to pump discretely in my cubicle under a nursing cover with a scarf blocking my door.

I don't know what to do. I am not willing to stop pumping at work. I am killing myself outside of work pumping after my son is in bed or waking up at 1 am or 3 am to pump before I start the day pumping when I wake up at 5 am, get dressed, breastfeed my son, pump for extra supply, feed him before we leave and pump again. I rented a hospital grade pump to speed up my pumping sessions at work to 10 minutes rather than 30. I've started coming into work earlier to pump before my boss gets in and we have meetings scheduled.

I think that she is also upset as I had a discussion with our supervisor about not traveling until my son was older and now am not going on a few site visits. Also, last week we had a conference and the hotel could not provide me a place to store my milk all day so I went back and forth at lunch and our half hour break to pump and drop off my milk in the refrigerator.

I think that what really irks me is that I have several colleagues who will regularly call into these meetings or just not show up and I'm being singled out.

I don't really want to escalate the issue by reporting it to my supervisor or HR, but I feel like if it continues, I might have to. I thought being honest to my boss and explaining the situation would help, but now it seems like it is making the situation worse.

I had decided to look for a new job, despite really liking mine, after the travel and conference situation arose. What would you do? [/quote]

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