Wind In My Head: Of pumps and tin cups
Wind In My Head
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Of pumps and tin cups
The most surreal sight I've witnessed in school in a long time. 2 teachers. Both mothers. Standing outside the toilet chatting. Carrying identical blue bags. And I have come to learn that these blue bags contain necessary apparatus to express milk. Both chat for a bit, both graciously allow one another to use the single cubicle, more privacy, both decline, one "reluctantly" accepts, the other goes to the other toilet, both to express.Extremely bizarre.
As if it wasn't puzzling enough when once, I was in the staff toilet and I heard strange pumping sounds from the next cubicle. I looked down into the bowl, expecting something to come out of that (I have seen enough scary, alien movies to expect anything). When I found nothing, I bolted out of the cubicle with the strange pumping sound still going on, washed my hands and streaked out of the bathroom as if there were bats after me. A while later, I realised it was one of the teachers expressing milk.
That was a while back. I haven't noticed anything for a while. I thought, perhaps they've stopped nursing seeing that one of them, her daughter's had her one year old party and the other one, her son is a good 10 months old now or something like that.
Then, I see the two of them in deep commiseration today outside the toilet.
I go back in to tell KW how bizarre a scene it was and she reveals to me that the blue bags are an improvement. She had one day seen the one with the ten month old rushing to the toilet holding a huge tin cup with a cover (she explains it as the type you use when you go to food centre to get beancurd dessert or fish ball soup packed into- the more environmentally friendly way of buying food). She too was puzzled but didn't think much about it until she was in the ladies one day and swore that someone was milking a cow next door with a metal bucket. And out came the mother with her tin cup regaling to KW how great a relief it was to get it all out- that promptly weirded KW out and she shoved it into the recesses of her mind until I brought it up this morning. And apparently, said mother has stopped with the tin cup and has moved on to the little blue bag.
So, I don't know which is more bizarre, the tin cup story or the fact that the two women were exchanging expressing tips and carrying identical bags.
It did add colour to a relatively dull day. I wonder if those bags come in any another colour.
Ondine tossed this thought in at 19:17
2 thoughts...
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At 10:40 am
Threez said... Never mind the blue bag and tin cup.
When you get to your #2 you'll be expressing into:
- plastic bowls
- plastic bags
- sinks
- toilet bowls/bathtubs
- direct into baby's bottle
- your coffee -- voila, cafe au lait! Or okay, cafe avec lait
You won't care about glamour.
Bats won't freak you.
Blue bag can't contain you.
Why?
Because when your breasts are ready to EXPLODE nothing matters except to get that milk shooting out of the dome.
Then, relief, sticky relief.
*Word to the wise: do not wear expensive techno-fabric designer clothes while breastfeeding. I still have milk stains on my Prada skirts.-
At 8:33 pm
Kay said...
Um... expressing in toilets is quite common. At least it is this year, at where I work.
What's alarming (for the mums) is when some ignorant staff go nosing around in the staff fridge, pick out the unmarked bag (presumably containing the milk bottles), shake it a bit, going "Who's (is) this, ah?"