Before we get into the weeds on this, I think it is important to point out that every single breastfeeding working mom handles this, we deal with it fine, and generally without you even being aware of it. Let the mom be the judge about what she can handle. All moms and situations are different, and there is no need for other people to preemptively decide what these parent researchers can and can not manage, especially when it's not something you have personally dealt with.
To fully understand some of these stories, you need to understand a bit about breastfeeding and pumping. For those unfamiliar with the purpose, need, and process of pumping in general - here is a quick tutorial. The process is fairly similar to what dairy cows go through... If a woman is nursing her child, her body is making as much milk as the child currently taking out. Production doesn't immediately cease when she isn't with the kid. If she doesn't pump, after awhile she will experience engorgement and leakage, both of which are fairly self explanatory. That sends a signal to her body that she doesn't need to produce as much milk in the future, which is not the case if she plans to continue breastfeeding. Therefore, she also needs to take the milk out to keep her production up to the level her child needs. Hence the milk extraction process.
The pumping process varies between models of pumps, but there are some consistent themes. There is an electric motor (usually with a battery power option), that creates suction. There are tubes from the motor that go to funnels placed on the breasts, and bottles attach to the front of the funnels to collect the milk. There are special bras that will hold the funnel/bottle combo in place, and this allows a mom to work with her hands while she pumps. Being able to be productive during pumping is important, because the process is not like dumping out a cup, it is more like emptying out a spray bottle by squirting it a bunch of time. Milk extraction can take awhile (~10-20 min). The entire process is creating food for babies, so all the parts need to be kept sterile if the baby is getting that milk later. This means somewhere to wash, and possibly boil, components. If that level of cleanliness isn't possible, there is always the pump and dump (which is sad, because that stuff is liquid gold), but being somewhere with access to clean water or sterilizing wipes is preferred. Then the milk needs to be safely stored. It can be refrigerated for up the three days, or frozen for up to three months (but that requires consistent access to refrigeration or ice). Airlines technically allow frozen milk to be transported, if stringent rules are followed, but not all airline employees realize this, and there are plenty of stories of multiple weeks worth of milk being thrown out even when rules were followed.
So, for all of the reasons above, sometimes it really is easier and less time consuming to just have the baby in the field (with the mom, or in the vicinity with a caregiver). That being said, sometimes that just isn't feasible to bring baby, so here are the promised heroic, harrowing, and humous tales from the rock star field researcher pumping moms.
**We will update this with additional stories as they come in, so please share yours! Let's normalize this and support upcoming field researcher parents!***
- "I taught a field course in Saint Lucia while pumping. I could not afford to bring my family, plus we were on a scuba diving boat all day every day, no place for baby/dad to be asked to hang out! I pumped the whole time and was able to keep up my supply and bring back the last 6 days worth of the milk. I pumped between dives on the boat with my manual Medela breastpump (HIGHLY recommend!!) under a nursing cover, stored milk on the boat in a cooler, and use pump sanitizing wipes (the Medela ones) to sanitize. There was no way to have privacy on the boat other than my nursing cover. I think it was actually really good for my students to see a pumping mom and see how dedicated I was to both them (teaching the course) and my family. They learned a lot about pumping and no one was weird about it at all. It really was great!" - Melissa Meadows
- "I pumped when at work for roughly a year, in the office and in the field. I'll save the office stories for another time, but here is one of an unplanned field pump. When my son was about 8 months old, I was working as a consultant, and I had a site visit with a client. By that time, I had been pumping while at work for awhile, and was a pro at timing it so I could slip away and pump between commitments, or during water breaks during surveys. We had a three hour meeting scheduled, which was no problem. I pumped prior to the meeting, and then headed over. But the meeting went over time, and then the client wanted to go and visit the entire site with us. As the meeting stretched out to 5 hours, other things were stretching as well! I was getting fairly uncomfortable, and leakage was imminent. I didn't feel comfortable telling the client, who I didn't know well, the situation. But luckily the other person I was in the field with was a Mom, I quietly explained the situation to her, and she understood and was on board to help. We told the client that I had a previously scheduled conference call, which is a perfectly acceptable corporate reason to need to step away if a meeting ran overtime. She took over the meeting on foot, and I took the vehicle to a stand of trees and pumped out as much as possible in 10 minutes, and returned to the group. It all worked out fine! But I was extra careful to ask about the possibility of extended follow up site visits after that. Most of my fieldwork was carried out within reasonable proximity to a vehicle, so it was easy to keep a cooler in the car and pump in there. I could pump between field sites, while everyone was getting to vehicles and often breaking for a snack and water anyway. For those wondering, I used a Medela pump, those things are efficient, and for the field they come with batteries and car plug adapters - woo hoo. There are also small coolers that plug into car lighter ports, and those are nice to have for the milk if you have a vehicle (or even just a car battery) but not ready access to ice." - Anonymous
- Great article about international fieldwork while pumping - https://fieldsecrets.wordpress.com/2018/02/27/international-travel-field-work-while-breastfeeding-a-mommys-tale/
- Article about "(Re) productive fieldwork", including during pregnancy and while pumping. Includes loads of good advice and relatable anecdotes. "Milk, Guilt, and Turtles" - https://fieldsecrets.wordpress.com/2021/01/26/milk-guilt-and-turtles/
- [Insert your story here :)]
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