Yes, I leave my kids with strangers

"I'm so lucky that I don't have to send my kid to daycare. I could never leave him/her with strangers all day."

Drives.me.nuts.

I've talked to working parents who have purposefully gone to great lengths to avoid daycare. Working opposite shifts from each other so that one parent is always home with the baby. (But rarely home with the other parent...) Putting up with a grandparent or other relative who provides substandard care. All because they believe that anything is better than daycare.

Don't get me wrong. I know that some grandparents/relatives provide great care. Some parents work opposite shifts because they need to or want to. Some parents aren't able to use daycare for reasons of finances, logistics, etc.

But I resent the implication that daycare is a last resort. Because it's not. The "lucky" kids are the ones who receive quality care all day long, whether that care comes from a daycare center or a nanny or a grandparent or a stay-at-home parent.

As for the idea that daycare = leaving kids with strangers? I mean, come on. It's not like I picked a random person off the street to watch my kids. Yes, daycare teachers are strangers... but if they're good ones, they don't stay strangers for long at all.

Case in point. Meet one of the "strangers" who I leave my kids with every day:

That's "V," and I'd like to tell you two quick stories about her.

#1: When Littles first started at her preschool, V was one of two teachers in her classroom. A few months in to the school year, as my due date with Noob approached, V asked me about plans for Littles when I went into labor. I said that since we have no family in the area, we were hoping one of our friends could help out, but we'd have to play it by ear. Without hesitation, V gave me her cell phone number, and encouraged me to call her if we needed any help with Littles. We didn't end up needing to do so, but it was a huge weight off my shoulders, knowing that we had backup from someone who Littles knew and trusted fully.

#2: We're expecting again! I'm due with "Q" in July 2012. We waited to tell Littles until after we heard Q's heartbeat for the first time. When we did, at a morning midwife appointment, my husband was so excited that he suggested going straight to Littles' school to break the news. V has moved out of the classroom and into the director role, so she was the one to answer the door when we got there. She took one look at our faces and said, "Are you pregnant?" And when I smiled and nodded yes, she screamed, "Congratulations!" and gave me a big hug.

So yes. If V is a "stranger," then I freely admit that I leave my kids with strangers every day. And I'm proud of it.

Another cool website for working parents

As with Relish!, I originally tried Readeo through the Mamasource deals site, but it's now become a permanent part of my working mom bag of tricks.

Basically, Readeo allows you to read childrens' books on your computer. It provides a library of a bunch of books (I won't hazard an estimate, but suffice to say we've had the subscription for over three months now and are still discovering new books) and you can flip through them, pictures and text and all. Littles owns tons of real books and we check out books from the library, too, but since we discovered Readeo, she almost always bypasses the real books to ask for "books on the computer" for her nightly storytime.

That alone is probably worth the $9.99 monthly subscription fee. But what makes it great for traveling parents is that you have the ability to "BookChat" with someone on another computer. You can flip through the pages of the books together, and even bring in audio and video. (The video appears at the bottom of the screen with the book "pages" on it.)

So last week, while I was on a business trip, I was still able to do storytime with Littles. Littles loved it, I loved it, and it gave my husband a much-deserved break!

It's also great for distant grandparents and other family members. You can invite them to join the site and they can create their own guest accounts for free. Then, when they BookChat with you on your paid account, they will have access to the full Readeo library. (Guests not BookChatting with a paid subscriber have access to the book of the month, as well as a few other free books.)

Downsides? The audio/video quality is not as good as Skype or other dedicated video conferencing tools, but it's definitely serviceable, and the book-reading functionality more than makes up for it. Also, the site makes heavy use of Adobe Flash, so it's not usable from devices that don't support Flash, such as the iPad.

Readeo does offer a 14-day free trial, so sign up for it before your next business trip and give it a shot!

What's for dinner?

I will be honest here. I have many talents. Cooking is most definitely not one of them.

Fortunately for me, I married a man who does enjoy cooking. Even so, in a household with two busy working parents and two kids who are typical eaters for their ages (that is, a little picky), "What's for dinner?" is often one of the most challenging questions of the day. And the answer is "Take-out" a little more often than we'd like.

As of late, we've started using a service called Relish! We originally found it through Mamasource deals site, and it's really helped us with meal planning and preparation.

I've discovered that what I like least about cooking is not the cooking itself, but planning and shopping. Relish! helps tremendously with this. Each week, it provides about 10-15 different dinner options. All you have to do is click a button to add them to your weekly menu. When you're done, it generates a shopping list for you. Easy! It also stores every recipe in a searchable database, so you can go back and choose favorites from a past week.

We've tried a lot of different meals over the last few months, and have found them consistently easy to prepare and absolutely delicious! Trust me, when I say they're easy to prepare... they're easy to prepare. To give you an idea of my lack of cooking skills, I've messed up cooking rice before. But Indian chicken korma? Spinach lasagna rollups? No problem.

Relish! also provides freezer meal options. This worked out well when both Hubby and I went out of town on business a few weeks ago. We were able to prepare a weeks' worth of freezer meals ahead of time for my mother-in-law, who was staying with the kids. Then, all she had to do was pull a meal out of the freezer and pop it in the oven, rather than hassling with cooking dinner with two kids under her feet. We've also used this for quick weeknight dinners, or just to have a home-cooked meal option even if we haven't had time to get to the grocery store yet.

One limitation of Relish! is that it's really geared towards dinners, not breakfasts or lunches. This is fine by me, as I usually just do cereal/yogurt for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch -- easy enough to plan for. But Hubby likes to eat more elaborate meals earlier in the day, and he says he's used other sites that provide good breakfast/lunch options.

Still, we both really like how easy Relish! makes dinner. So, if you're already in a good groove with your dinner preparations -- rock on! But if not, I highly recommend checking out Relish!

Easy.

Twice in the last few months, I've had stay-at-home moms tell me that it's easier to be a working mom than a stay-at-home mom. The reason they always give? "At least you get to go to the bathroom by yourself."

The peeing-with-an-audience situation also came up in a Babble article posted by another friend, entitled "Stay-At-Home vs. Working Parents: Questions to help spouses bridge the communication gap." It's meant to be a humorous explanation of the different stresses that stay-at-home parents face, as compared to their working spouses.

Even working moms sometimes echo the sentiment that they have it easier, such as in a recent post by NPR Baby Project blogger Christy Lilley, as she prepares to return to work after the birth of her second baby:

I often think being a stay-at-home mom is harder than being a working mom.

After a particularly exhausting weekend with James [her toddler], going back to work feels like a break. Even though I'm working, I find little moments of time throughout the day to myself. Whether it's catching up with a friend on the phone during my commute or listening to whatever I want on the radio instead of Raffi nursery rhymes, working out at the company gym during my lunch hour, or reading the news online in between meetings, I savor these moments.

When I'm home, I have no time to myself. It's all kids, all the time.

Let me be clear: I agree that being a stay-at-home mom is hard. But I don't think it's inherently harder -- or easier -- than being a working mom.

In fact, after stating that being a stay-at-home mom is harder than being a working mom, Lilley goes on to discuss the many challenges that she faces as a working mom. The constant guilt. Working with people who are either single or have a stay-at-home spouse and therefore don't have to drop everything at 5 PM to get the kids from daycare. Being pulled in a million different directions, and feeling like you're doing neither of your full-time jobs (the one that's paid in money, and the one that's paid in toddler-hugs and baby-kisses) very well.

But she also talks about how much she enjoys her job. I enjoy my job, too. And so that is why for me, being a working mom is easier than being a stay-at-home mom, despite the challenges. If it were harder --if the enjoyment I got out of the job wasn't worth the challenges I faced in it -- then I would stay at home.

I have no personal experience aside from maternity leave, but presumably, it's the same for stay-at-home moms, no? A commenter on the Babble article stated:

I've been both a SAHM [stay-at-home mom] and a WOHM [work-outside-the-home mom] at different points in my life, and I have to admit that for me personally there is less stress as a SAHM because despite all my children's craziness, I madly, deeply and passionately love them and no matter how mad I get, my love for them covers all. Can't say the same for colleagues and bosses!

Exactly.

So, can we please quit with the whole "who has it harder" discussion? Forget stay-at-home vs. working moms. Being an adult is hard. Period.

I can envy my husband, who never seems to struggle with guilt because he works, and say that working dads have it easier than working moms. But I know he feels an inherent drive to be the primary financial provider for our family, even though he doesn't have to be. I don't feel that same drive.

He might envy his co-workers with stay-at-home wives, for whom going on a business trip simply entails a quick phone call home to say, "Hey, I need to travel next week," rather than the complicated coordination of travel schedules and daycare pickups and freezer meals that we have to go through whenever either of us has to go out of town. But surely he doesn't carry the same pressure that they do of knowing that they're just one silly mistake away from losing their family's entire income.

And while parents will often roll their eyes or smile knowingly to themselves when a childless person complains about how difficult his/her life is, the truth is, childless people have their own challenges. About five years ago, I went to a big meeting for my entire team at work. We were being asked to travel more and more, and some people who had joined the team when it was a low-travel job were not happy about it. One of them stood up and said, "I have three small kids, so it's hard for me to travel on short notice. I think that people who don't have family commitments like that should take on more of the travel burden." Another co-worker, a brilliant single woman with a lot more guts than me, replied angrily, "How dare you? I might not have kids, but I do have other things in my life that are just as important to me as your kids are to you. I don't want travel to take me away from those things, any more than you do."

(As an aside, that woman has been promoted multiple times over the last few years. The dad no longer works at the company.)

Yes, these days, I'm often up late at night blogging or exercising or sewing or pursuing other hobbies, because that's the only time I get to myself. Whereas before kids, I could fill my evenings and weekends with coaching/refereeing high school lacrosse and captaining my local Team in Training triathlon team and training for an Ironman triathlon myself and playing ice hockey and soccer, all on top of a job that required extensive travel, and still get to bed at a reasonable hour (or sleep in if I didn't). But I had to do all that to feel fulfilled, to feel like I was doing something with my life. Now I feel like I'm doing something with my life when Noob wakes up at 6 AM and I snuggle in bed with him and fall back asleep while he nurses. Or when Littles gets home from school and we go up to the playroom and dance like fools to kids' music before dinner.

So who has it harder? Who cares. Why can't we just celebrate the joys and vent about the stresses of our jobs -- inside or outside the home -- without comparing to the joys or stresses of other people's jobs?

Hanging up the horns, round 2

Back in June, with my average daytime pumping output down to maybe an ounce a day, I decided drop my one pumping session. The pumping session was solely to keep my supply up and put milk in the freezer for donation, since Noob was drinking whole milk exclusively during the day, so it was no problem to drop that session. I dropped off my last milk bank donation shortly afterwards.

At the time, I was also pumping while on business trips. I'm currently on my third business trip in two months. On the first one, in mid-June, I brought my pump, but only pumped 3 ounces over two days. On the second one, two weeks ago, I brought my pump just in case, but ended up pumping only once, for a measly half an ounce. Back home, Noob did fine with no breastmilk.

So, last Tuesday, after dropping Littles off at preschool, I drove to the parking lot of a local 7-Eleven. There, I met up with the mom of a nine-month-old who is unable to nurse, who I had found through Eats on Feets. I handed over the remainder of my freezer stash, mostly milk pumped on business trips and therefore not frozen within the 24-hour window required by the milk bank. I really enjoyed meeting the mom whose baby would benefit from my milk. Donating to the milk bank has been great, but very anonymous.

Anyway. That donation meant I was officially hanging up the horns. I did not bring my pump on my trip this week.

When I reached this point with Littles, I wrote about a recent discussion over whether women should feel proud for breastfeeding their child, since after all, women have been breastfeeding for millenia. I said that I did feel proud, because women have not been pumping for millenia, and pumping was hard work!

I feel differently this time. Sure, I'm pleased that Noob is among only 10% of babies who are still breastfed at 1 year of age. But as I've explained in previous posts, I really didn't have to do a whole lot of pumping for him. He was home with family till just before his first birthday, and I work from home, so I mostly nursed him directly. And yes, women have been doing that for millenia. Not really an accomplishment, like something I should be really proud of doing.

I'm also pleased that I was able to donate over 400 oz of breastmilk (340 oz to the milk bank and a little over 90 oz direct to the mom I met last week). But again, I don't really feel like that's a special accomplishment. Women have been wet-nursing for millenia, too, and aside from my European adventures, it was really pretty easy to fit the extra pumping sessions into my day.

I am proud, and very very lucky, to work in a job and for a company that made breastfeeding so easy. Every woman should have the opportunity to breastfeed as long as she wants, even if she returns to work. It makes me sad that so many women find themselves in work situations that are not conducive or even openly hostile to pumping. It's just not right.

I'm also thankful that I still have the opportunity to nurse Noob. He's an early riser, usually waking up between 6-6:30 AM, and I am… well, not an early riser :) So most mornings, I get him out of his crib, bring him in bed with me, latch him on as we're both lying down, and catch a few extra minutes of sleep while he nurses. I love it, and I'm in no rush to end it.

But I do love the fact that this morning, I was able to go for a 30-minute jog on a beautiful trail next to a river, rather than spending 30 minutes pumping. It's been a great run, but I'm glad to be done.

Adventures in pumping, European edition

Just from a quick peek at my tag cloud, it's obvious that I have quite a bit of experience with pumping while traveling. So when I found out I had to go on a business trip to Munich, Germany, I wasn't particularly worried about pumping during it. How much different could it be?

It turned out to be quite the adventure :)

Before the trip
This trip was for a large meeting with some business affiliates that are based in Europe. To keep costs down, most attendees shared hotel rooms. This poses obvious problems for me with needing to pump, so I contacted the group in charge of organizing the meeting ahead of time to let them know that I'd need a place to pump and also a refrigerator in my room.

(As a quick aside: I have shared a hotel room while pumping, on two trips earlier this year with the lacrosse team that I coach outside of work. I had to coordinate with my roommates so that I could take over the bathroom a few times a day. Certainly not preferable, but it did work out.)

I felt a little awkward, especially since the main organizer was a man. But the other four members of the group were women, so I figured at least one of them had to have breastfed at some point.

There was a moment of confusion when the male organizer thought that I meant I was bringing Noob with me -- as in, bringing him into the actual meetings! He gently suggested that I might want to have someone to watch him during the day! I reassured him that it would just be me and my trusty breast pump, and he made the proper accommodations.

The outbound trip
I flew to Munich via London. My outbound flight left at about 9:45 PM on Sunday, so I was able to nurse Noob normally all day Sunday before getting on the plane.

I opted not to pump at all on the trip to Munich. Noob nurses little enough now that I'm not in discomfort if I go for a while without nursing/pumping, and it was much easier not having to deal with pumping on the plane. I might have tried to pump during my layover in London, but as it turns out, my director (my boss's boss) was on my flight from Dallas. We ended up chatting for most of the layover. It was nice not having to find an excuse to slip away to pump.

In Germany
I arrived in Munich a little before 6 PM local time (11 AM Dallas time) on Monday, about 18 hours since my last nursing session. I eagerly got my pump out... and realized that despite all my careful planning, I had forgotten one very important thing: A converter to allow my pump's AC adapter to run on European voltage. Oops.

Normally, I would have been able to use my pump's battery pack, which I always leave in my pump bag. The suction isn't the best, but it would have allowed me to pump enough to stay comfortable while I searched for a converter. Unfortunately, I had pulled the pump part of my Medala PISA out of the larger bag for this trip, to save on space in my jam-packed suitcase.

I quickly searched Medela's web site (in German, of course!) and figured out that there were a few "apothekes" (drug stores) in the area that were affiliated with Medela in some way.

I set off for the nearest one, which was in a shopping area directly underneath my hotel. It was a tiny shop, so I was surprised to see that they did have a sizeable display of pump parts and other breastfeeding supplies. They did not have any PISA adapters... but they did have an Avent manual pump available. These retail for around $30 in the USA. At this store, it cost €61.99 (just under $90).

Whoa.

But I was already late for a meeting, and I knew that the store would be closed by the time it was over. I didn't have time to shop around for the best price, nor did I want to wait to pump until it reopened the next morning. So I bought it.

I had trouble at first because the Avent only comes with a standard size (24mm) breast shield. I typically use a large (27mm) or extra large (30mm) shield with my PISA, so the smaller shield was very uncomfortable. But I found that I was able to insert the larger Medela shield into the Avent shield. It didn't look pretty, but it worked! This is not the greatest picture, but you get the idea. The clear plastic (and the white handle) is the Avent stuff and the cloudier plastic is the Medela shield:

Once I got that figured out, I actually liked pumping with the Avent. I got a decent amount of milk, and it didn't take much longer than pumping with the PISA. Actually, when Littles was the same age that Noob is now, I had retired my PISA and was pumping with a manual pump (Medela Harmony) on all my business trips. It might be time to retire the PISA again! The PISA bag takes up nearly half of my rollaboard suitcase -- compared to the Avent, which is just what you see above -- so it would be nice to get that space back.

Anyway. The Avent turned out to be so effective that I ran into another problem: I ran out of room for all the milk I pumped! I didn't bring milk storage bags (I had forgotten them, too, in my PISA bag -- yeah, I don't know where my brain was when I was packing!) and so by Thursday morning, I was down to my last storage bottle. I looked at a couple of stores to find some sort of container for my milk, and eventually saw the following box on a shelf at a different drug store:

Based solely on the picture, I quickly discerned that this box contained something breastfeeding-related, and then I read the (tiny) English text to confirm that it did indeed contain breastmilk storage bags. So that picture was a very effective advertisement! But I don't think it would fly in the USA, because it shows -- gasp! -- a naked breast! Funny how different things are in Germany :)

On Friday, with all that milk pumped and safely stored, it was time to head home.

The return trip
I had brought a small cooler bag to carry the milk home, along with a box full of sandwich size Ziploc baggies. I got the hotel bartender to fill up a baggie with some ice, then put it in the cooler bag with the milk before heading to the airport.

It just so happens that the male organizer of the meeting was on my flight from Munich back to London. I had met him during the meeting itself. He turned out to be a jovial older British man, quite open and likeable. As we were waiting to clear security, he said, "I just have to ask, because we were all wondering. I understand that you have a baby and that you had to pump milk. But what was the refrigerator for?"

I was confused by the question... "To keep the milk cold." Duh?

Him: "You're actually bringing it home with you?"

Me: "Yep. It's right here in my backpack."

Him: "It will last that long without refrigeration?"

Me: "Yes, it's in a cooler bag with ice, and anyway, it's good for about 10 hours at room temperature."

Him: "Wow! You learn something new every day!" Turns out that none of the female organizers have kids, so none of them had any clue about breastmilk pumping and storage :) Although one is pregnant now, so I guess she'll learn soon enough!

I was glad that the topic had come up prior to clearing security, because security turned out to be a pain. I got to the metal detectors, pulled out the cooler bag, and discreetly informed the security agent that it contained breastmilk.

Agent: "What?"

Me (a little louder): "Breastmilk."

Agent: "WHAT?"

Me: "BREASTMILK!"

So much for being discreet. At that moment, I was relieved that my director and his boss, who were flying out at the same time, had gone out of a different terminal and weren't with us at that security checkpoint. Nothing like discussing your bodily fluids in front of the people who control your promotions.

After that exchange, the agent directed me to put the cooler bag through the x-ray machine. This is something that I haven't been doing as of late when flying in the States, just to avoid any potential risks of exposing the milk to radiation. I simply tell TSA that it is "liquid medication" and they hand-scan it. But putting it through the x-ray machine is probably fine and I really didn't want to have the "liquid medication" discussion at that moment.

On the other side of the x-ray machine, another agent pulled the cooler bag off and said, "What is this?" in broken English. I replied, "Breastmilk," and she gave me a confused look. So I pulled an actual bag out, since the German-purchased bags helpfully had "breastmilk storage bags" printed on them in four different languages :) She gave me another confused look and said, "Where is your baby?"

Ummmmm, at home?

She called over a supervisor and we had the exact same conversation, including asking where my baby was. Eventually, they did a swab in the cooler bag and on the pump, to test for explosive residue. (TSA often does that in the USA, too.) When it came back clean, they sent me on my way.

Whew.

Just before boarding the flight, I asked at a small eatery for some more ice for the cooler bag. The cashier pointed to the front of the eatery and said "Ice." I was confused, as all I saw was a cooler for ice cream." The cashier was confused, too, and said, "Ice" again. "Ice cream, yes?" Ohhhhhh! I said, "No, I need actual ice" and she figured it out and gave me a cup full of it :)

And finally, my milk and I were safely on our way to London.

I had an overnight layover in London, which was good from a milk storage perspective, as it allowed me to dump out the ice and chill the milk safely into the fridge. The "fridge" in this room was actually the automated minibar, so I had to be very careful not to move stuff around, to avoid getting charged for it!

The next morning, I filled up two more baggies with ice at the hotel ice machine. I placed one at the bottom of the cooler bag, then put all the milk bags in, then put another baggie on top. This was at about 7 AM London time (1 AM Dallas time). Then I headed for the airport for the 10-hour flight back to Dallas.

I was a little nervous about clearing security in London. After all, Heathrow is the airport where the original liquid explosives plot was uncovered. But thankfully, compared to Munich, clearing security in London was a breeze. I did have the milk x-rayed again, but it didn't attract any extra attention.

On the flight, I was stuck in a window seat, so rather than disturbing my seatmate by getting up to ask for ice, I simply asked the flight attendants to give me a cup of ice whenever they came around doing beverage service. They were very accommodating. I kept the box of baggies in my seatback pocket, so I could dump the ice into a baggie and place it into the cooler bag, which I kept under the seat in front of me.

The milk was still nice and cold when I got home at around 2:30 PM Dallas time. The oldest milk was about 5 days old at this point, and had been refrigerated (not frozen) the entire time, but I did a quick sniff test and it smelled just fine. So into the freezer it went!

Overall, my first impressions were right: It really wasn't that much harder to pump while traveling internationally vs. domestically. But next time, I think I'll bring my pump's battery pack, my manual pump, and my milk storage bags :)

Where I pumped today (well, yesterday)

I was in my company's office in Los Angeles this week for a team offsite. On Wednesday, I pumped in the "quiet room," as this office calls it. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture, but it was a pretty standard setup with a couple of chairs and a power outlet.

On Thursday, I went to pump late in the day and discovered that the quiet room was locked. Fortunately, my teammates had all left for the day, and the conference room that we used all week had no interior windows and a locking door. So I just locked the door and used that room to pump.

Probably the best view I've ever had while pumping :)