whup-WHOMP, whup-WHOMP

You may recognize in my title the telltale sound of the breastpump: three times a day, for ten to twenty minutes at a go, the whup-WHOMP, whup-WHOMP ties me to my Miss Baby, now at home with Pynchon while I pick up the pieces of my academic life at the office.

whup-WHOMP, whup-WHOMP, whup-WHOMP, whup-WHOMP, whup-WHOMP.

Initially, I looked on the pump askance: I considered it a mommy-replacement device, likely because my desire to have Miss Baby drink from a bottle owed largely to my increasing desperation to get a little distance from the milk vampire, in ways I simply couldn't when she was eating every 90 minutes every day. The pump, that is, was marking me as a bad mommy, because it indicated my desire to get away.

Soon, though, as my return to work loomed nearer and nearer , I rethought my attitude to the pump: now, since it was unavoidable that Miss Baby and I be separated for eight or nine hours during the day, was it not a testament to my motherly love that I would still work hard to provide her with Mommy-Milk in my absence? In this case, the pump marked me as a good mommy, one who sacrifices personal dignity and time to hook herself up to a milking machine for the benefit of absent baby daughter.

This was all fine and good for most of the first week back at work.

But I keep forgetting to pump.

Here's the thing: I have no reason not to pump. I have a private office, with a door that both closes and locks. My schedule is my own to devise, and I come and go and set my own day as I please. The pump is sitting right beside my desk. And yet. It's usually a throbbing boobie or a call from the home front that actually makes me lift up my shirt and set the whup-WHOMPer in motion. So now I'm all worried about messing up my milk supply, which is a practical concern. Less practical is the return of all the guilt and anxiety and self-recrimination: how could I so totally forget baby daughter as to allow myself to get caught up in my own thoughts? Her Bad Mother describes a gruelling scene of similar selfishness, and while not waving back at your baby is much more heartwrenching than developing sore boobies, both cases promote in the unlucky mommy a real sense of shame at her own selfishness.

Here's what I'm not supposed to admit: sometimes, at work, I get so caught up in what I'm doing--reading, or writing, or completing petty paperwork, or organizing ideas--that I forget all about my baby. It's at once so obvious and normal, and so guilt-provoking and heartcatching. Sometimes I forget. But I always always come back to remembering.

Sigh. It's astonishing how I can find stuff to feel guilty about, non?