Making Your Employer a Partner in your Breastfeeding Journey

When we discuss reasons that encourage a successful breastfeeding experience, there are many things that can help a mother. Breastfeeding education is a common one, potentially her family’s cultural norms, support by immediate friends & family, but for working mothers support by her employer can be crucial to the success of her breastfeeding journey. As a mother returns back to work full-time, she spends a minimum of 25% of her time at work - but the majority of her awake hours of the week at work. Because of this, an environment that does not encourage her need to breastfeed - can ultimately end her breastfeeding journey.

Although in an ideal world, your employer will be bending over backwards to help you - you can only control how you participate in a relationship. Here are some tips on establishing a relationship, so that your employer respects you need & desire to breastfeed for an extended amount of time.

1. Discuss your Expectations Before & During Maternity Leave

   Depending upon your work environment, your manage/team/etc. might not understand what postpartum looks like for women. If you work with many men or a lot of older women, many of them might not remember or really understand what it is like for a woman to return back from maternity leave. Because of this, many managers might expect once you return back to work that you will be the same person that left or maybe even expect the woman before you were even pregnant.
   Therefore, have discussions before & during maternity leave of how you picture your return looking like. Speak in picture - not words. By that I mean, do not say “I am breastfeeding and will need time to pump.” But rather, “I am going to breastfeed for probably the entire first year. I would like a private space to pump my milk. I anticipate needing to use this space at 9:00AM, 12:00PM, and 3:00PM for about 30 minutes every day.”
   Unfortunately, a lot of people’s expectation are not met - when the have not voiced what their needs & expectations are. So make sure your employer understands what your needs are for your return back to work.

2. Boundaries Keep Everyone in Line

   It is very easy for women to feel guilty and begin to blur (or completely erase) the boundaries between work & motherhood. I am as guilty as anyone to admit that I felt I always had to “makeup” for the time I took off to have a literal baby. However, this is not helpful to you or your company. You will burn out & they will end up with a burned out employee…no one wins.
   So as you return back to work establish some boundaries and hold them as tight as possible. That might look like “I will pump 3x/day with appropriate amounts of time between each pump” or it might even look like “I will pump at 9:00, 12:00, & 3:00. Not a minute later or earlier. No matter what.” If that is your boundary, then you have to maintain it. It is not your manager’s job to remind you to go pump, but it is your job to go and pump. Every time you make that a priority, you let everyone else know that that is your greatest priority…they will respect that priority if you do.

3. You Don’ t Have to Hide Your Challenges

   Have you ever thought about how much money it would cost your employer to replace you? It is believed that at a minimum, it costs a company 6-9 months of your salary to replace you. Your happiness & successful with THEIR company is very important to your employer, because to hire someone to replace you is a devastating cost of business.
   With that said, it does a company no good for you to hide your struggles and overburden yourself with everything. You will burnout. So you do not have to hide the fact that you’re a mom now. You should never feel “guilty”, because you have to leave work due to your child being ill. You sure as heck should never feel less than because you remove yourself for 30 minutes to quite literally feed the human(s) your brought into this world.
   So do not hide your work or home life struggles or commitments. For me, that often looked like skipping after work activities to be home with my baby. And guess what, my husband does the same thing, because missing our son’s Little League game would be devastating to both of them. Men & Women, fathers & mothers, both mesh their work & home life - men just feel less guilt about it.
   So tell your manager when you are expecting a particularly rough week, or when your child is feeling ill, or your kid’s daycare is closed for the day and be a partner in managing your work & home life.

4. Be a Good Employee & They Will Care for You

   Okay, I am already anticipating the many responses on everyone “one case” scenario that they are the best employee in the world and their employer still treats them like trash. I offer 2 things: 1. Do some major self reflection and make sure that is true. 2. If #1 is true, then go get a new job.
   For everyone else, remember that your employer is just trying to get a job done. If you are making a positive influence on them meeting their goals, then they will want to work with you to make sure all things are met to keep you happy.
   Remember keeping you working for them has huge value to them. So be a good employee. They will understand that “your best” yesterday, today, and tomorrow will all be different levels of success.

As you pursue this journey returning back to work, remember that you are trying to be a partner with your employer. You can work against them, you can make it difficult for the both of you (some might do that on their own) or you can thing of ways where your employer can support your breastfeeding journey rather than diminish it.

Regardless of all this advice, motherhood is a very common time for us to begin to reflect on our employer. Are they serving you still? Is your work still rewarding? Is the environment where you would like to spend the majority of your time. So to help you continue thinking of your partnership with your employer, I suggest you take our free quiz, Is Your Workplace as Family Friendly as They Say? As you take this quiz, don’t focus too much on your actual score, but rather the questions & what things are of value to you - does your workplace rank high on those specifically?

If you have more questions about work-life as a new mother, I would love to help you work through them! Please email me today!

Love,

Antoinette C., CLC