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Little tufts of fur, like Siamese cat tumbleweeds, pepper the floors in my house. If I listen closely enough, I swear I can hear dirty dishes – mostly bottles – screaming from the sink. Don’t get me started on the size of the laundry pile. I’ve always been an expert multitasker, and a few months ago I could have easily handled these chores, tidying up during a phone meeting. But that was before “sleep when the baby sleeps” and certainly before I spent 160 minutes a day hooked up to a breast pump, tethering me to a spot in my bed that has sunken into a crater in the shape of my butt.

They told me this would be hard, of course. But I am a woman who has always relished a challenge. And still, it feels like meeting the American Academy of Pediatrics’ guidelines to exclusively feed my daughter breastmilk for the first six months of her life may be the challenge that breaks me. In these moments, when I am frozen in place as the pump thub-dubs beside me, I feel so displaced from the world. So alone.

“Studies say 60 percent of women don’t achieve their own breastfeeding goals that they set for their child, and it’s because there are so many barriers they face,” says Dr. Joan Meek, professor emerita at Florida State University College of Medicine. Meek is the kind of doctor with so many clusters of letters after her name that it’s hard to keep straight. But in addition to being a medical doctor and a lactation consultant, the Katy-area resident is among the lead authors of the AAP’s newest guidelines, which were issued this June.

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Maybe you heard of the kerfuffle they raised, after dropping in the midst of a baby formula shortage that ignited a debate over whether breastfeeding is a “free” option to feed a baby. (It isn’t, Meek says, in no uncertain terms.)

“We wanted to bring our guidelines in line with the WHO recommendations,” Meek says. And that meant recommending families receive support in breastfeeding for the first two years of a child’s life, up from one year, previously.

“Even though the evidence supports a longer duration of breastfeeding, the message isn’t that everyone has to breastfeed for two years or more,” Meek tells me during a phone interview as my pump whirs along in the background. “But for those families that make the decision to do that, we need to be making it easier for them to be able to achieve their goals.”

It’s not the dishes, or the feline furballs, per se that are haunting me. It’s the knowledge that I can’t attend to those chores right now, so I’ll have to sacrifice either sleeping when my baby sleeps or snuggling her while she’s awake to check off those duties. 

"A part of this new person we become when we become moms, we’re always trying to find corners to cut so we can fit in the extra 10 minutes we don’t have,” Ashley Morris tells me one day during a video chat. She’s a manager of customer relations at Willow Innovations Inc., one of a growing number of companies that produces wearable breast pumps – devices that can be tucked into your bra, hooked up to your smart phone, and worn on the go: While commuting or washing the dishes.

“Ten minutes is worth a whole lot to me,” she says. “That gives you more time with your baby. It frees up these tasks that I don’t want to do, but have to so I can get back to these joyous moments.”

The Willow 3.0 pump she’s showing me has a 4-ounce capacity on each side, which actually adds up to closer to 20 minutes than 10. Over the course of a day, that could equal about two hours or so of a mom’s time.

“One of my favorite things about this pump actually, is that yeah, it gives me the opportunity to be busy if I want to,” Morris says. “But it also gives me an opportunity to rest, because I feel like a lot of the message is ‘Do, do do.’ But I don’t always want to do. I’m done. I’m tired.”

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Breastfeeding – and pumping – is quite literally draining. Creating enough food to nourish another human burns hundreds of calories a day. And the chemicals a mother’s body releases during a nursing session make her feel tired.

“It is a very time-consuming and tiring process and involves a lot of planning – whether that be working with the mother’s schedule, baby’s needs, packing and cleaning the pump parts, let alone the time it takes to actually pump or breastfeed,” says Aoife Zakaras-Nally, a spokesperson for Elvie, another company specializing in wearable pumps.

“Women deserve to have options that work for them as they juggle many different roles,” she says.

While these options may sound basic, they’re luxuries.

I purchased my breast pump – a Medela Pump in Style – through my insurance before my daughter was born. Thanks to my coverage, I didn’t have to pay a cent. That, in itself, I know, is a privilege not every woman has. And even that doesn’t unlock all the features of the Elvie Pump and the Willow 3.0. While Zakaras-Nally says the Elvie Pump (which costs $570 on the company’s website) is eligible for some flexible spending accounts, it’s not guaranteed.

“Following the success of Elvie Pump, Elvie developed Elvie Stride specifically for women in the U.S., as 80 percent of breast pump sales come through the Durable Medical Equipment channel, but most of the breast pumps available in the DME channel feature dated technology,” she says. The Stride, she notes, is available through insurance, with prices that vary by provider. Elvie’s website lists the pump at $270.

Similarly, Morris tells me Willow’s Go pump, while offering slightly less mobility than the 3.0, still offers mobile convenience, and is less expensive than the $500 ticket price of the 3.0, at about $350. Moms can save between $95 and $159 on the pumps through their insurance. 

The fact that things like time become a luxury to new moms is a perfect illustration of the need for new guidelines like those issued by the AAP, says Meek.

“There are so many women who do not have those advantages, and it’s very challenging for them,” she says. “And we recognize those situations. That is where we need legislative action. We need more support for women.”

Dr. Stan Spinner, chief medical officer and vice president of Texas Children’s Hospital has always recommended the benefits of breastfeeding. “It’s nature’s best nutrition,” he says. “There’s ample evidence to show there’s lower instances of upper respiratory infections in babies who’ve been breastfed. Less diarrhea, and less ear infections.”

There’s also evidence that breastfed babies have lower rates of childhood obesity. And breastfeeding benefits the mother as well, decreasing the incidence of breast and ovarian cancer, as well as diabetes and hypertension.

But, he says, “I could tell you through all my years in practice, seeing moms from different socioeconomic groups, there’s also that inequity about the support systems that are there for moms,” he says. “And how do we deal with those types of equity going forward? Just saying it’s good for you and the baby, that’s fine. But until you make it an environment that supports breastfeeding…

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“There are huge barriers for a lot of moms to continue beastfeeding,” he continued. “They just couldn’t do it at work. Or it was difficult to pump at work. They did give it up. It was often the case that it wasn’t that they didn’t want to continue doing it.”

It just got too hard.

“We have about 84 percent of all births in the U.S., where the mother will initiate breastfeeding,” Dr. Meek tells me. Still, only about 24 percent report their child is exclusively consuming breast milk when they turn 6 months old, as is currently recommended by the AAP.

New hands-free, cord-free options, and support from employers and public policy could remove barriers to increase that share.

Breastfeeding – or pumping – is “a great investment of a mother’s time, and I think early – even when things are going well – it still feels like that’s all you’re doing,” Meek tells me.

She takes a deep breath, and for a moment, it feels less like I’m interviewing an expert, and more like a woman who’s been through this before is reaching out through the phone to hug me with her words.

“In the early days, it’s hard. It’s work,” she says. “You feel like you can’t really do anything else besides breastfeeding. And particularly for a first-time mom, we don’t set those expectations realistically.”

It’s a quote for a story. But it’s also a show of support. An extra hand.

It’s exactly what I needed. 

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Maggie Gordon is the assistant features editor at the Houston Chronicle, where she has worked since 2015.

Before joining the Chronicle, Maggie worked at papers in Connecticut, including the Stamford Advocate and the Greenwich Time, covering a variety of beats, from general assignment and municipal coverage to education, demographics and business reporting including real estate trends and the hedge fund industry. She is a graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

Greatest hits include a narrative about alligator hunting in a Texas bayou, a horse trainer's quest to tame a wild mustang in one summer, and a feature about the inmates in a transgender tank for sex workers in Houston's county jail. She loves quirky characters and stories that combine adventure and humanity. Bonus points if it unearths a love story.

Got a tip for a great tale? Find her on Twitter at @MagEGordon, or send her an email at maggie.gordon@chron.com.

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