Tips for Returning to Work

• Most women are anxious about returning to work.  It’s hard enough to think about leaving your little sweet pea.  In addition, you’re trying to figure out the logistics involved – child care, feedings, pumping (where, when, milk storage), appropriate clothes, leaking breasts, etc..
  
  Here are a few things to think about and some helpful suggestions:
1. Remember to introduce expressed breast milk in a bottle between the ages of three to six weeks. Continue offering your baby a bottle routinely so he/she will continue accepting it. Even if he/she initially accepted the bottle, if not offered one routinely, he/she may reject it just when you need to return to work.
2. Add an extra pumping session into your 24-hour feeding schedule at least one week before returning to work. Begin storing milk from these additional pumping sessions at this time. This stored milk can be used to bottle feed your baby the first few days of separation. The milk you pump at work can be used thereafter.
3. Give your baby a bottle of expressed breast milk two times a day for a full week before returning to work.
4. Consider your wardrobe – plan to wear button-down shirts or shirts that can be easily lifted, rather than one-piece dresses.
5. Find a relaxing area to pump when you are at work.
6. Gently massage your breasts prior to pumping to help with let down.
7. Take pictures of your baby to work. Look at the pictures, think about your baby; if necessary, take a tape recorder with your baby’s cooing and crying on it. Sometimes hearing your baby can trigger your milk to let down (start flowing.)
8. Refrigerate or freeze any stored milk from your pumping sessions for future feedings. Remember, breast milk can be added to other breast milk during a 24 hour period.
9. Keep extra nursing pads at work and in your pump case.
10. If you do not have any nursing pads, you can cut a new, unused feminine panty liner in half and place each piece in your bra (the self-stick side attaches to your bra.) You can also do the same using half of a new, small disposable diaper. These ideas may sound funny, but they are effective temporary solutions to an often embarrassing situation.
11. MOST IMPORTANT – Maintain your pumping routine. If you are away from your baby 8–10 hours a day (assuming 8 hours at work, 2 hours travel time to and from work), you will probably need to pump at least three, preferably four times during the time away in order to maintain your milk supply. Remember the concept of demand-and-supply – if you are not removing the milk from your breasts by pumping or nursing, your body begins to slow down its production of breast milk.

Breast pumps are available for purchase through local nursing/baby stores, pharmacies, hospital gift shops, some lactation consultants, as well as on-line.