Did you say... ‘breast’?!
As a new mum and a business owner, Bec had to discover for herself the wild impracticalities of continuing to breastfeed while working. Frankly, she says, "it's a bit fucked". Welcome to The Club.
“If you had a boss that didn’t like you leaving every two to three hours to go and pump, that would be super stressful …
“In fact, I think working for anyone else and having a young child would be extraordinarily stressful — not being in charge of your own destiny; not knowing if you’re being judged or talked about when you’re not there; and not knowing whether people appreciate who you are and what you’re doing.”
Bec McHenry set up her first business straight out of university, so aside from a cafe job in her teens, she’s never technically worked for anyone but herself. Now she’s a devoted mum, a recovering workaholic and “basically unemployable”.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that she returned to work, in some capacity, when her daughter was eight weeks old — fitting in bits and bobs in that phase where the baby sleeps for hours a day.
Perhaps it will come as even less of a surprise that her decision has raised eyebrows in all kinds of ways.
But between comments on her work-life choices, comments on her body and all the judgement from society and from herself, Bec is also navigating a new challenge that she hadn’t seen coming: the sheer impracticalities of continuing to breastfeed as a working mum.
Bec is founder and face of To Good Use. In simple terms, the business provides consultancy for property developers.
The more complex reality is that Bec helps those developers make better use of their public or shared spaces, creating value in the places where amenities meet parks, or parks meet shops.
Whether she’s working on a shopping complex or the ground floor of an office building, she creates spaces in which people want to be.
Inclusivity is at the heart of what she does. So when returning to co-working spaces and client sites, while continuing to provide breast milk for her child, the challenges hit hard.
Because, believe it or not, traditional workplaces are not built to accommodate breastfeeding women, and traditional working days don’t schedule in pumping breaks.
The thing with breastfeeding, and pumping specifically, is that it’s hard to know what it’s like until you’ve done it. Most people, women included, underestimate just how time-consuming and laborious it can be.
Pumps themselves tend to be noisy, conspicuous and comprised of fiddly parts. You need a clean, safe environment, a place to rinse those fiddly parts, and a way to keep the milk cool and sealed until it’s needed.
If a breastfeeding woman doesn’t pump or feed every three hours or so, things can get very uncomfortable very fast. And yes, leaks happen.
More seriously, going too long without expressing can lead to infection and fever. Pump too infrequently over time, and your body takes it as a signal to stop producing altogether.
In short, regularity is key.
“No one really told me how impractical it was to breastfeed and work. I kind of self-discovered the impracticality by doing it,” Bec says.
She has pumped in disabled toilets and in the back of Ubers. She’s found a cosy spot in a co-working space that works for her… but officially, it’s a phone booth.
She’s even carried a mini beer fridge on a flight, on a round-trip to Sydney, to make sure that day’s milk wouldn’t be lost.
She committed to breastfeeding and stuck with it. But it’s wildly inconvenient.
It’s not only the time and energy that pumping takes. It’s having to plan the day around pumping every couple of hours; and it’s choosing whether to make an excuse for your absence, or deal with the reaction when you say the word ‘breast’ in a room full of men.
“I started to realise it was all a bit fucked,” Bec says.
“This whole thing is completely and utterly impractical. And no one tells you about it. No one talks about it,” she adds.
“They say you’ll either be able to breastfeed or you won’t. They don’t say it’s actually super time-consuming, or that you won’t be able to exist in a work environment without having to constantly grab your boobs as subtly as you can. It’s really weird.”
Manageable… but only just
Bec has figured things out, gradually, along the way. But she admits that if she’d understood the realities of breast pumping, she might have made different choices.
“If I have another kid, I now know that I’ve done it before and I could do it again. But would I want to? Maybe not.”
She also knows that she is not in the same position as many women. She owns her business, and she’s discerning about who she works with.
In her co-working space, there may be those who wince and blush at the mere mention of a breast. Frankly, they’re not her people, and she can walk away.
“If you had a boss that didn’t like you leaving every two to three hours to go and pump, that would be super stressful,” Bec muses.
“In fact, I think working for anyone else and having a young child would be extraordinarily stressful — not being in charge of your own destiny; not knowing if you’re being judged or talked about when you’re not there; and not knowing whether people appreciate who you are and what you’re doing,” she adds.
“If I worked for an employer and had to be ‘on’ at certain times, it just wouldn’t be feasible.”
Creating empowering spaces
As someone whose work centres around creating spaces that work for good, the whole experience has cemented something Bec already knew; something that’s already at the heart of her work. Workplaces need to work for everyone. And to make that happen, we need input from everyone.
Historically, workplaces (offices in particular) have been designed for men, by men, with ‘traditional’ values and practices in mind. If we continue to design spaces this way, we will always have women expressing milk for their children in the bathroom, othered and uncomfortable.
Bec says she is seeing more asset owners designing with accessibility front-of-mind, for parents but also for neurodivergent or disabled folks. They’re the partners she tends to work with. But they’re certainly not the norm.
“If you want people — particularly mothers — to reenter the workforce, then you need to empower them to do so,” she says.
“A part of that is providing the necessary facilities, experiences and support for them to go back to work.”
Bec isn’t talking about having dedicated pumping spaces in every office or co-working space. She’s talking about genuine mixed-use, flexible spaces, where people can pump, take a phone call, or have a moment to themselves after a tough day.
“That diversity of use needs to be acknowledged upfront. Otherwise, people aren’t going to feel empowered.”
People cannot change their circumstances to fit into a building. So buildings must adapt to the needs of the people using them. For those designing the spaces, that means looking at all the possible use cases, from all kinds of perspectives — especially those you don’t have personal experience of.
“Hopefully we’re moving into a space where inclusion and designing for everyone is not just a bumper sticker, or something people put on their marketing brochures. It actually happens,” Bec says.
“But that does require you to put yourself in someone else’s shoes – and not just one person, multiple people, across all walks of life.”
If Bec’s story resonates, join the conversation…
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Who are we?
We’re Marie Dowling and Stef Palmer-Derrien, two business buddies navigating the tech, startup and small biz world with toddlers in tow.
👸🏻 Stef Palmer-Derrien is a freelance writer, journalist and word person, specialising in startups, tech and small business. Stef is also the co-founder and editor of The Club as well as media advisor at Newsary.
Stef is a parent to a two-year-old wrecking ball of a child, and also a dog who has absolutely no chill.
👸🏼 Marie Dowling is the other brain behind The Club and a self-proclaimed startup town crier. As the founder of PR startups Newsary and EzyCom, she is committed to democratising PR to share all the stories that make our world move.
She’s also la maman to a beautiful two-year-old and an Australian bulldog who does nothing but chill.