Breastfeeding mother: Hiding in the company toilet, breaking down and persisting for breast milk

Family and career are always dilemmas for women.

Becoming a mother is a sacred thing, but in the workplace, it becomes a constraint. Both ends of the scale seem destined to be out of balance.

Becoming a "breastfeeding mother" is the first step to feeling the imbalance. Carrying ice packs and breast pumps, they walked into various "little dark rooms" to prepare breast milk for their children.

After getting out of the "little dark room", they must cheer up and win a place in the workplace regardless of gender.

During this period, the pressure of work, pumping, and lack of self-worth were all weighing on me like a mountain, leaving no room for respite.

But this kind of sacrifice and hard work is taken for granted in the eyes of family and society.

Perhaps, what is more difficult than social animals is the mother who carries milk (the following definition comes from Baidu Encyclopedia).

Mom in the "little dark room"

There are different kinds of "little dark rooms".

The better environment is the conference room and tea room, which are air-conditioned. What's worse is that there is no exhaust system in the toilet and storage room. Going in in the summer is like a sauna.

When the lunch break comes, the mothers who are still breastfeeding come to the small black room to act as "cows" with blue ice bags and breast pumps, sucking out the milk hard and storing it for their babies for the next few years. Days of breast milk.

After taking half a year of maternity leave, Lin Qin became a breastfeeding mother. The company did not have a mother's and baby's room, so she could only take a reusable bag to the toilet, hang the breast pump in the bag, hold the bottle with one hand, and always lower her head to see if the bottle was full.

"My neck feels very sore after sucking milk." Lin Qin said.

The company’s women’s restroom only has two pits, and pumping usually takes at least 20 minutes. The tension of occupying public resources will permeate the whole process. "No one will rush you, but you will still be very stressed."

Some mothers have breastfed in the data room because the door cannot be locked. She is always worried that someone will come in unexpectedly. “It’s very embarrassing when I meet a male colleague.”

Shelly is sucking breast milk in the corridor. The only shelter is an abandoned refrigerator. Occasionally, she will deliver food and smoke. "It's very inconvenient for men to move around."

According to data from the "2019 Survey Report on Living Conditions of Working Mothers" released by Zhaopin Recruitment, only 8.22% of companies in China have maternal and child rooms, less than 10% .

The moment of collapse in the "little dark room"

Mothers gather in the little dark room, and a certain kind of pressure comes with it.

Wu Jing can only suck out 130CC of milk at most. Her colleague who is also breastfeeding can suck out 200CC at one time. "It only took 20 minutes to fill a bottle."

This is not a competition, but the difference in milk volume always makes Wu Jing feel a certain sense of anxiety, "Why can't I squeeze out so much, but others can?"

For this feeling of guilt The source of this, she summed it up as “I always want to give my children more and better things.”

Generally speaking, breastfeeding usually lasts until the child is about one year old, but Wu Jing persisted until the child was one and a half years old. , "Just for immunity."

Her idea is to work harder now and save the time of taking the child to the hospital in the future.

But when the child grew up, she found that her colleague’s child started drinking milk powder very early and did not get sick very often. His food tasted very good and his body was strong.

On the contrary, my child doesn’t like to eat and is very thin.

"There is a feeling that input and output are not proportional." Wu Jing said.

But mothers with a lot of breast milk did not feel relaxed in the "little dark room". They will pump milk more frequently. When they encounter impromptu meetings or urgent work tasks, the breast pumping task can only be put on hold. This results in the milk not being able to be drained in time and causing milk blockage.

Once breast obstruction occurs, it feels like a stone is pressing on your chest and you can't breathe.

I often feel a tingling sensation around my chest, "like a needle is pricking you." If it is not cleared in time, it will cause mastitis, and in severe cases, you will have a high fever for several days.

In the "little dark room", accidents can happen at any time. I was in a hurry to go to work, and when it was time to express my breasts, I realized I had forgotten to bring my breast pump and milk storage bag.

But the most stressful thing was that after hard work for 20 minutes, I was accidentally pushed by my hand and all the breast milk spilled out.

This is the most devastating moment of the day, and it is accompanied by extreme criticism of myself, "Why are you so careless, why can't you do this well?"

Difficult to balance

All the tension and anxiety in the "little dark room" must be put away the moment you leave.

Less than three months after taking maternity leave, Chen Ziyu returned to the workplace. The new position is a product manager, responsible for the development and promotion of travel routes. Because there are many departments connected, overtime is the norm during Double Eleven and 618.

The company has requirements for the number of customers it can accept every month. This month it has to accept 1,000 people. If it only receives 700 people, the salary can only be discounted by 30%.

The company also implements a terminal elimination system - Chen Ziyu plans to buy a house in Shenzhen, and she must work hard to keep her job.

At 12 noon, it was time for lunch break for colleagues. With a milk storage box in his left hand and a breast pump in his right hand, Chen Ziyu went to the small and smelly toilet and stayed there for half an hour.

After a gap of two hours, she would repeat the same thing again. If there is an impromptu meeting, she has to respond to group messages while pumping breast milk, and hurriedly put away the equipment.

Of course, don’t forget the anti-overflow breast pads. Unfinished breast milk spills on clothes, which will be very embarrassing in meetings.

If the milk blockage is serious, you will have to pump again after the meeting.

But it is not easy for mothers to quickly adapt to work after giving birth.

Once, Chen Ziyu encountered a bottleneck situation and was very out of state. She made a mistake when calculating the cost. The company lost more than 6,000 yuan at once, and the customer finally canceled the order.

Although it is not a big project, Chen Ziyu still feels a certain sense of frustration. In the past three years, such low-level mistakes would never have happened. "Never allow yourself to make mistakes."

It was also at this moment that she felt that as a woman, there was always an imbalance between family and career. When her children are sick, Chen Ziyu always asks for leave to go to the hospital. Her husband works in IT and is even more incapacitated than her.

Imbalance in energy distribution will also have an impact on career promotion. "The company sees that you invest too much in your family, so you will definitely not be given priority for promotion."

For breastfeeding mothers, the most feared thing is business trips. A few days before the business trip, you need to prepare a week's worth of breast milk in advance, which means you will pump milk more frequently than before.

Two times turned into three times, and three times turned into four times. "When I have some time at work, I go to pump and try to find opportunities."

Guo Xiaojie once went to Shanghai on a business trip. Because the breast milk she prepared was not enough, the child started to Drink milk powder.

Perhaps because she had not yet adapted to mixed feeding, the child had diarrhea after eating. When she called, she heard the child crying, "I felt guilty and uncomfortable."

During the business trip, in order to prevent breast milk blockage, Guo Xiaojie returned to the hotel at 11 o'clock every day to continue pumping breast milk. She thought about sending the breast milk through the cold chain, but she gave up because she was worried about spoilage.

It took half a month for the child to return to his usual state and lose a lot of weight.

Isolated and helpless

The pressure of work and carrying milk have never overwhelmed mothers. What is really devastating is the inability to get the emotional support they deserve from their families.

During the lactation period, mothers pay great attention to their diet. They dare not eat heavy oils and spicy foods, and eat mainly light meals.

When the baby got a little older, Chen Ziyu started mixed feeding. In order to reward herself, she would occasionally go out to restaurants.

Once, Chen Ziyu and her husband went out to eat crayfish. When they came back at 10 o'clock in the evening, her father-in-law did not open the door and stared at the couple at the door. I don’t even have the spirit of hard work.”

Her husband has a gentle personality, which is why Chen Ziyu stayed with him in the first place. But when it comes to dealing with family conflicts, the husband has no independent opinion. "After that, I ate crayfish without me."

It is difficult for the husband to understand the hard work of breastfeeding mothers. Occasionally, when he expressed his bitterness, he would only respond, "I'm tired, I don't want to hear it." Most of the time, there was zero communication between the two, and there was silence in the room.

When I get home, my parents-in-law always say, "There is always no milk and I can't feed the child enough." No one cares whether she is happy as a mother.

She was tested in the community and found to have severe postpartum depression. As soon as he has some free time and lets himself go, Chen Ziyu will fall into an emotional swamp - he has no interest in doing anything, he always has insomnia in the middle of the night, and "want to cry every night."

Wu Jing has also experienced such moments. Once, the refrigerator at home was moved and my parents-in-law forgot to plug it in, and all the breast milk inside went bad. It took Wu Jing several days of hard work to squeeze it out, but in the end she had to throw it away.

"They didn't say sorry, I was the only one who was sad."

Looking at the breast milk she brought back, my mother-in-law would make some comments - "Your milk is not good." She used to be beautiful, but now she is too white."

Although she made no less sacrifices than her husband, Wu Jing clearly felt that when her husband came back, the dishes her mother-in-law would cook would be much richer than usual.

The depressed mood is conveyed to the mother, and the feedback she gets is just "Mother-in-laws are the same all over the world, just bear with it."

For the treatment of postpartum depression, the support of the family system is the first line Protect. But the reality is that after countless new mothers discover their own depressive tendencies, the first hurdle they encounter on the road to recovery is the confusion of their family members.

In their eyes, this kind of sacrifice is natural.

Isolated and helpless - this is how Wu Jing and Chen Ziyu described the situation at that time. The social welfare society provides psychological counseling, but the effect is very little. They all know that if they want to relieve their emotions, they can only come from their relatives.

During the epidemic, Chen Ziyu and her husband were both unemployed. She went out to find a job alone. "A 29-year-old person looks like a 40-year-old."

After weaning, Wu Jing After moving out from home, I am still busy at both ends, but I feel much more relaxed.

However, because she drank too much soup during lactation, she is now out of shape, has excessive uric acid, and has nodules in her liver and lungs.

Before giving birth, all her indicators were very normal.

In the Korean drama "Reply 1988", there is a classic line about mothers: I heard that God cannot be everywhere, so he created mothers.

But in reality, mothers are not gods. Every step they take, from childbirth to work, is like walking through a dense jungle, relying on strong willpower to get out of the difficulties in work and life. mud.

Behind the halo of the role of mother, there are countless darkest moments.

Note: The characters in the article are all pseudonyms.