Going back to work with a 2 month old baby has been bearable because....the boys have been home along with the nanny, giving me a sense that she is not alone. They are able to fill me in on all the important parts of her day (like sleeping and eating.) I also had a breast pump which allowed me to continue giving her the best milk on earth and be comfortable in my hours away from her. My working hours aren't all that long, and it is only twice a week or so that I have what I consider a full day. But they are hours away. And I do need my pump.
The French system requires teachers be with students pretty much for the entire working day. Gone are the 40 minute prep periods, but they do have a pretty serious coffee break for teachers who aren't on service. While I do have service twice a week, missing the ever precious 1/2 hour break, I am lucky enough to have some open periods after the recreation. (This is due to the fact that the bilingual program is new at this grade and so we have only one section. Next year there will be 2 sections, meaning I would teach another class for the after break hours.)
All that just to say, I have time to pump. I spent my pumping sessions marveling at the basic principles of design that allows me to provide nutritious (and cost effective!) 'meals' for my little one. I have the Medela Harmony pump which basically looks like this:
It is an amazing device with a deceptively simple design. Pushing the handle creates a suction which mimics a baby nursing. I can easily fill at least one 8 ounce bottle while I am at work, sometimes two. Additionally, if I get home and find the little princess lost in slumber land, I can pump anytime I need to relieve discomfort and keep the magic juices flowing. The pump itself breaks down into 6 main parts (excluding the bottle itself.) The Achilles heel here is one thin little flap called the membrane. You can see it in this diagram, which has the parts to the pump itself on the left.
If that fragile looking flap breaks, the whole system loses power and shuts down. By now you can probably guess that is exactly what happened to me, despite sending out waves of gratefulness for 30 minutes each day and washing this piece ever carefully. Normally, one could easily order a replacement pack of 6 to be delivered in a jiff. Unless you live in Africa with spotty mail service- I'm told it will work IF I have a PO Box (actually, another perk of the job is I can get things delivered to the school- though I am not sure a membrane for my breast pump is the kind of thing they were thinking when they instituted that policy) IF I can convince the company to send international mail, and IF I can wait however many weeks it will surely take to arrive.
I need milk now. So in desperation and panic I planned to comb the streets of Abidjan in search of salvation. It is considered a progressive, modern city, I figured, surely they have something out there. My nanny suggested looking in pharmacies and so that's where I began. And I found this:
Mine did not come with whatever that thing is on the side (an extra tube with breast shield?) I just got the glass tube and the rubber ball. It came with a huge dose of doubt despite the pharmacy technicians assuring me it would work. (Our conversation deserves a blog post of it's own. Seriously.)
The pump, supposedly from France- a dubious website makes me wonder, is completely stupid. I argued with pharmacy staff (through a smile, always a smile) about whether the design would actually function and if it could be adequately sterilized. They laughed, assured me it would work and brought up my past health concerns as a way of validating their prior success in serving me. (I would have been more impressed with their collective memory if they weren't also using it as a way to introduce me to one of the staff who had been out on my previous visits. "Oh yes, we know her. She came in when she was pregnant, And then for malaria medicine," one woman says to another. "And she came for iron pills," a man pipes up. So much for the privacy act...)
After establishing my medicinal history for any and all in the pharmacy, they proceeded to show me how the pump works. I wanted to see how the rubber bulb would come off. She resisted at first and seemed to be saying it would be too hard get back on, which was kind of my point. Aside from that, I couldn't really see where the milk would go. That little glass reservoir on the side wouldn't hold very much at all. The fact that the whole thing was glass hadn't even registered yet. I was a desperate mom on the edge of despair at the thought that I wouldn't be able to continue breast feeding. So I bought the pump.
I managed to get it to work slightly. It was completely inefficient and messy. The bulb never really expanded again after contracting it with the first squeeze and the small reservoir meant continuously removing the pump in order to empty the milk into a bottle. Just when I thought I might figure it out, get a rhythm going, it would need to be emptied. I fiddled with it for about 15 minutes before cursing its futility and took both pumps apart to clean and sterilize (hoping some miracle would occur to with the Harmony pump in the cleaning process rendering it workable again.)
Instead of a miracle, I found I couldn't put the Tupi pump back together. No matter how hard I have tried, I cannot get that bulb to go back on the end of the glass pump. All the time I am trying I keep thinking about how the pump is glass and if I apply too much pressure in my zealous effort to get the bulb back on, it will shatter and probably slice my hand open. Oh, the glories of motherhood.
Unfortunately, there is no happy ending- yet. School is out for 2 weeks starting tomorrow, so at least I will be able to stay with the baby all day and night. I have 2 weeks to figure this out. I have written the company requesting they mail me a small package of membranes internationally. And I think I saw some pumps in Kinshasa, where Christian happens to be. Hopefully he is coming back next week (one week before school starts again) and will be bringing some kind of alternate, workable pump.
Turns out sometimes design can be too simple and simple is not always better. I am rooting for Abidjan, however, and so I suggest these 2 goals- replace the Tupi with the Harmony (with plenty of extra spare parts) and get some solar phone boxes- a super smart idea from London.
