Oh god. I’m giving a talk in Oslo on Monday at Kari Skj¯nsberg-dagene, which I’m looking forward to – and I’ve got flights taking me straight there and back so I’ll not even be away from nine-month-old Jessica for much longer than on a normal workday. But I just realised that pumping at a conference might not be easy.
I realised a while ago that I’d have to drag the breastpump along on the plane. But it only just occurred to me that I’ll also need a PLACE to pump. I won’t have my office with its nice lockable door. I do have a battery pack for the breastpump. But I hate the idea of sitting on the seat of a toilet in a cramped cubicle and pumping for ten minutes. Ugh. Skipping pumping won’t work – I’d be in agony, there’s no way I can go from 5 am till 4 pm with full breasts. This side of motherhood is (like many others) extremely bodily. Hopefully I can get hold of the organisers – maybe they’ll have a room I can use.
And then I’m assuming they’ll let me bring the breastmilk home on the plane.
Joanna
Good luck! I hope the organizers can find you a quiet room.
PL 19/09: Private, personal, public « Plinius
[…] But I find it very useful to read the thoughts of people in their tentative and formative stage. I use my blogs to talk to myself, and like to read people who are doing the same. I also enjoy people who combine the personal and professional, like Jill Walker does. She is not pumping iron, but breast milk. […]
Jill Walker Rettberg
Well, the organisers were out of their offices all Friday – so I guess I’ll just have to see how it goes!
Jill Walker Rettberg
Ah, the organiser rang me this evening – I can use her office, so all will be good. And apparently I should check the breastpump/cold pack in because the freezer pack thing needed to keep the breastmilk cool MAY count as “liquids” and can’t be taken through security. It’s really hard to find info about this. So travelling home from Italy in a couple of months I’ll have to dump my milk, then, if I’m in transit and flying for a total of eight hours which is too long to keep milk at room temperature (and probably too long not to pump, as well).
Argh. Can’t even find proper information on this online.
M-H
Please let us know how this goes, Jill. It’s not meant to be this hard!
jill/txt » returning to research after (sort of) three and a half years away
[…] I basically just spent three and a half years home with kids. Not quite, I worked full time for a few months between the babies, and have been part time for the last year, but part time with a baby at home and juggling childcare with my husband has not left much time for reading, writing and thinking about research. To be honest I’ve barely scraped by doing my teaching and things I had to do and oh my do I feel it now. I think I may have missed a few things. But finally both little ones (now 18 months and nearly 3 1/2 years old) are enjoying preschool (barnehage) and I am loving having full days back at work. Have you noticed that work is more enjoyable when you have enough time to do it properly? I’m also loving how energetic I am in the afternoons with the kids – parenting is such a different kind of work (and fun!) to being a professor that I enjoy it immensely, rather than being exhausted from having already spent all day with them. I love, love, love not having to fit work into naptimes and evenings. Hooray! And I love being back with my colleagues – here’s the latest photo of our growing group at Digital Culture. […]