The Inconvenience of Breastfeeding Part II: Milking the Salmon

Dr. Sears frequently makes it clear that he thinks leaving your child for any length of time to go on a much needed vacation is akin to child abuse, or at the very least demonstrates a lack of good judgment. Dr. Sears may have something there, but he obviously does not understand the insidious addiction one might have to Salmo salar.

So I packed up my fly fishing gear and some clothes and some sunscreen. I packed up my clothes and a few odd books, and then with a resigned shrug of my shoulders, I packed the breast pump.

Then I left Sydney and her father and headed out to Newfoundland with five other men. And that was the problem, really. Though I warned the trip leader that I was going to have to pump every three to four hours and he nodded sagely, none of my compatriots really knew what that meant, or for that matter, what the big bag was for.

It takes about 18 hours to get to North Sydney, Nova Scotia by car from my house. Then it takes another 6 hours by boat to get to Port aux Basque, Newfoundland, then 45 minutes to get to Rose Blanche, where the road ends and you have to take a smaller boat for three hours to get to the mouth of the river, where you finally disembark and start walking up river until you get to the fishing camp, three miles inland. Somewhere in between all these hours of traveling I had to find a deserted corner and twenty minutes in which to empty myself out and then dump the resulting product.

You may be able to breastfeed your child discreetly while in public, but milking yourself is not a discreet activity. Even the bathroom of the highway rest stop is not a good place to set up your breast pump. For one thing the thing is so loud it penetrates out into the hallway. For another, women are not as polite as they might seem when faced with a closed bathroom stall which has been occupied for more than five minutes. One woman actually began climbing under the bathroom stall, presumably to join me or possibly berate me for spending too much time in the bathroom when the line snaked out into eternity.

After enduring endless hours of being entirely too full and endless commentary from my male companions when I finally emerged from my hiding spots, we finally did reach the camp, where recent renovations had provided a private sleeping area for me in a small outbuilding a few feet from the main camp. Normally I would have protested this special treatment, but the trip up convinced me that a little feminine privacy might be a good thing. And it was-- except for the fact that control over the generator which powers all the buildings rested in the hands of the my friends, with the result that I would be in the middle of a pumping session and be the victim of a sudden loss of power. Good thing the pump also runs on batteries.

To solve the issue of being way down the river into some good fishing when the time came to pump, I stuffed the hand pump into the back of my fishing vest. In between runs, while resting a pool, I disappeared into the bushes, removed my shirt, and, while being attacked by hoardes of black flies, proceeded to pump a few ounces from each side, just enough to tide me over until I could get back to camp.

Despite this extra challenge imposed on me by nature, I had a good time and landed quite a few fish and lost a bunch more and generally enjoyed myself thoroughly, away from house, home, and baby. When I came back, late on a Sunday night, I put the child to my breast as an experiment, and she latched on immediately, seemingly unaware that I had been missing for more than a week. Feeling good that I had survived the week, caught fish, and not lost my milk supply in the process, I asked my husband how the feeding went. I had left him almost five days worth of breast milk and then bought powdered formula to supplement. He managed to stretch the breast milk until I got back but he went on and on about the powdered formula.

"This stuff is so easy," he said. "You just put it in the bottle, add water, shake it and you're good to go. It's totally convenient!"

Convenient, shmenient.