Jen Mann - I Just Want to Be Perfect: I Just Want to Pee Alone, #4

The Fordeville Diaries

I f I'm being honest , I excel at very few things overall. While I don't fail all of the time, I've rarely risen to the top of my class or separated myself from the pack. My life is really a series of B+ level performances. Could I do better? Sure. Do I bust my ass to be the very best? Meh.

And then, every once in a while, I unexpectedly stumble upon something that I happen to do really well. Like clipping PTO box tops or finding the most flattering photo filter on Instagram.

You know what else I never expected to be particularly good at? Pumping breast milk. Because, when you're young, you don't aspire to play a starring role in Great Lactators of Our Time. You don't dream about your milk output and how it can surpass your wildest expectations.

Sometimes, gifts are just bestowed upon us.

In true self-sabotaging fashion, I hated the very thing I was so good at. I never really minded the breastfeeding itself (beyond the initial pain and how-does-this-work factor). But if you've ever spent any time at all pumping, I don't have to tell you that there is really nothing less fabulous than being topless and hooked up to a machine during the few minutes you are not tethered to a newborn each day.

However, if you're lucky/talented like me, you're what they call an overproducer. And with this talent comes great responsibility.

I learned this as I returned to work full-time when my child was three months old.

Several times during each work day, I'd head over to the pumping room, hauling my distinctly unstylish black bag over my shoulder. You know the one. You've seen it. The one that screams, "I know this bag is supposed to be discreet and incognito, but clearly it's a breast pump. It means I'm never more than three hours away from being topless with plastic accessories hanging off of my body. And, you'll be totally fucking sorry if you mistake this black bag for your black bag when leaving the office tonight."

We were lucky to have dedicated pumping rooms in my workplace, for sure. I emailed on my Blackberry and even fielded phone calls, all to the whirrrrr of the pump. I'd will my body to produce a set amount of ounces of breast milk at each session, knowing what I needed to sustain my baby each day while I was working. I knew one side produced more than the other. I knew when I was slightly dehydrated. I knew how long it would take, down to the minute. Whirrrrr went the pump. Two or three times every day. Nights. Weekends. Whirrrrr.

My freezer at home became a point of pride. While most moms would bask in self-congratulatory praise over Pinteresting made-ahead meals stacked high, mine overflowed with bags of frozen breast milk. Piles and piles of them. Why, look at that stash. How many ounces could I save? And who put a bag of vegetables in here? There is simply no room. I am overproducing and we will not waste a single drop. I started to wonder if we'd end up donating some of it just to make room for actual adult human food.

All of this was well and good in the land of the lactating, until about two weeks after I returned to work and my boss informed me I'd need to travel for a meeting. To London. For a week.

Im sure that many companies have come a long way in the last nine years, but back in the Corporate Breastfeeding Support Triassic Period of 2007, how the hell was this going to work? Would my place of employment be providing a residential-sized freezer in my hotel room, along with medical-grade dry ice and international shipping costs to get the liquid gold back home? They say the key to negotiations is always starting big.

My boss was a mother herself. I looked deep into her eyes for some flicker of empathy, but I could see that the figure-it-out approach was really the only one on the table. Ah, the pre-Lean In workplace era!

Giving up pumping was not an option, not on such short notice. Surely my body would spontaneously combust, and I had already maxed out all of my days off for the next 412 years while birthing a human. Plus, without pumping, what would I excel at? The options were shamefully few.