In the broom closet

You know that feeling, the one where you think, "Now just how did I wind up here/doing this?" Last weekend I found myself sitting on a bench with my back to the door, with brooms to my immediate left, appliances surrounding me, industrial strength cleaners to my right, and my breast pump perched a tad precariously on the edges of a cardboard box just in front of me.

Now, I was not, as you could very reasonably suppose, in a gas station bathroom on the road somewhere. I was at the spa. A very very nice spa, a place I've gone many times before and at which I've spent a good deal of money, a place of luxury and sophistication, a place whose purpose is to pamper its customers (for a substantial price).

This was the most time I've spent away from Hazel since her birth. I've been looking forward to going to the spa for over a year, and I was there with my mom, aunt, and sister. My breasts tend to leak milk if I haven't fed the baby for over 3 hours, so I brought my pump with me so I could avoid that happening mid-massage or other spa activity. Also, one's milk supply needs to be kept up by pumping when away from the baby, and having milk around with which other people can feed Hazel is important. All around, this was an important thing for me to be able to do.

I had a hard time leaving Hazel, but once I got to the spa I started to relax and enjoy myself. I had a great massage, and a really wonderful lunch. Then I decided to pump, and somehow, after hearing "it's private, with a door", and "we'll bring a bench in so you don't have to stand up", I wound up trying to balance my pump on the edge of a cardboard box amongst the chemicals.

I wasn't upset, didn't spend the time angry. I was amused, and got to read the lists of "Always" and "Never" things that the staff ("cast members") are supposed to always/never do, among them never saying no to a customer. However, I was uncomfortable. Pumping takes a while. I had to put the pump and bottles on surfaces that are probably not particularly clean. I was hidden away IN A CLOSET, because they didn't have anything better to offer me (they thought). Downstairs there's a very nice lounge with outlets, comfy chairs, a fireplace, and water to drink. But were I to sit there, other people could see me, and that seems to be the main thing that was to be avoided. I can totally understand the staff wanting to offer me privacy. However, I would frankly rather sit in comfort with a cloth draped over my front than in a broom closet so no one has to know that I'm doing something so gauche as pumping milk for my baby.

I never protested. I'm so used to going along, making do, etc, that it didn't occur to me until later that I should have said something, requested a different solution. It's sort of mind-boggling that they'd consider this a reasonable thing to do, really, but hey, I didn't stick up for myself. I will next time. I want to help our society move to seeing women nursing and pumping as a matter of course, a normal daily activity to be accepted as such and neither hide it away or create drama over it.

Now, the day before I did in fact manage to stick up for myself. I had gone out to eat with my family, and the host wanted me to take Hazel's car seat out of her (small) stroller, put it on an upside-down child's high chair, allow him to take my diaper bag, breast-feeding pillow, and stroller away, and position the baby on the inner corner of the table where other customers wouldn't have been able to get by rather than the outer, where he might have to move his path into the table area by perhaps one inch. hmmmm. I immediately didn't want to, and the more insistent he got the more resistant I got.

The bottom line is that the car seat in the stroller was no wider than the car seat on top of the upside-down high chair, and so his insistence was totally unwarranted. The fact that he was patronizing and disrespectful was an additional irritant. So, I just kept politely saying no, and eventually won my point with the help of our wait-person, who quite deftly edged him out of the way. Then, for the rest of the evening, he refused to bring water to our table, and wouldn't look at us. Amazing.

I am beginning to find that one of my new goals is to combat the discrimination, criminalization, and just plain rudeness that seem to be the responses of some individuals and our society toward the regular processes of motherhood by normalizing them.