Going back to work while trying to breastfeed is stressful and confusing. And in a world overflowing with more parenting books than you can shake a positive pregnancy stick at, these resources gloss over how hard working and breastfeeding is.
This book is for the million women a year - in America alone - who go back to work while breastfeeding. It offers the modern mama a straight-to-the-point resource on how to survive working and breastfeeding, based on the experiences of hundreds of working mothers. This book is here to help. No judgment. No Mommy Wars. No "breast is best." Just solutions.
Debut author Shortall strikes the perfect note for an advice book on what some readers might see as a niche topic—pumping and storing milk while at work—skipping past the breastfeeding basics addressed elsewhere to dive straight into logistics. Shortall repeatedly assures her peers (high-powered career women) that “your worth as a mother is not measured in ounces” and takes a casual, keeping-it-real tone toward everything from “porn-star boobs” to pumping during conference calls. Topics include calculating the stash you need to keep your baby fed during the day, negotiating pumping time and space with your company, washing your pump in shared spaces with minimal embarrassment, traveling without your milk spoiling or being confiscated by the TSA, and, when it just isn’t working for you, weaning. It’s the kind of information an intimate, chatty friend who’s done it all could share in a few lunchtimes and a session on the couch—did you know you can sterilize coffee cups in the microwave and pump milk into them?—except that not every mom has those kinds of friends. Having such helpful tips and tricks in print will be a godsend to the back-to-work mom who doesn’t have time for everything to go any less than smoothly. (BookLife)
As IBCLC’s, we understand the theory behind pumping and the production of breast milk. However, no one can understand the practicalities and the emotional cost better than a mom who has done it! Jessica Shortall’s book has hit on an area of need. Based on her own experience, she delivers practical how-to’s that other books are missing.
...a solid advice guide that should be on the shelves of any woman who enjoys a career and who wants to return to it while continuing to nurture her child: a guide very highly recommended for its exceptional focus and well-rounded discussion of the realities of the venture.
A must read for any mom who plans to pump at work. Jessica Shortall provides a thorough, practical, and relatable guide to the many challenges and rewards of being a pumping mom. She nimbly avoids controversy and judgment and presents all the things a working mom needs to know, even the things she didn't know she needed to know.
Shortall manages to be both hilarious and informative in the non-condescending manner that can only come from someone who has truly been there...the result is a holy grail of information. I described the book to a friend as 'postpartum-pee-inducing funny.' It is a book I not only want to buy for my soon-to-be-working-mom friends, but also for all of my coworkers so that they can just finally understand.
I read Work. Pump. Repeat. both as a mother who breastfed and worked, and as an IBCLC. The information in this book is spot-on the science behind lactation. The information is written so that stressed working moms will understand it with no jargon to wade through. Ms. Shortall tells it like it is and doesn’t sugarcoat the realities of breastfeeding and working. She reminds us that breastfeeding isn’t all or nothing and some breastmilk is better than none. Bravo!
