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DallasHorn
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Conclusion - 10 days of pumping while on a biz trip
DallasHorn
member
in Working Moms
Yesterday I arrived home having successfully completed 2 back to back weeks of traveling for work and pumping. I was pretty agressive in dealing with the clogged duct that developed on day 7, but once home, DS made sure to help out ;-) All my milk from both weeks was preserved and made it home with me.
I'm glad that I didn't give up even though pumping that much really sucks. My heart goes out to those that EP; makes my normal 2/workday pump when I'm WFH seem like nothing.
If anyone has questions - ask away!
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Re: Conclusion - 10 days of pumping while on a biz trip
I kept it in a soft sided cooler made by thermos. It's the "12 can" sized one and it was purchased at my local Kroger store in the seasonal/summer items. It has handles, so it was easy to connect onto my roller board. As far as keeping the milk cold, I just kept it on ice, which I filled up 2/day - once in the morning and again before bed. Each time before filling it, I would drain out the melted water.
As far as getting it home...I had brough with me two rubber made gel ice packs (which I purchased from wal-mart) that were about the size of a paper back book. I took them to the hotel receptionist the night before departing and asked them to freeze. I then collected these when I checked out the next morning. These alone kept the milk cold the entire day, including travel time.
The only thing I would pre-warn you about is that the airlines seem to be MUCH more strict about the # and size of your carryons. I packed really efficiently, so I was able to get the soft sided cooler into my roller board. Worst case scenario, I would have had to check my roller board, and rather taken the cooler and my should bag on the plane.
There is NO reason you should have to pump and dump at all!!
If you are staying at a hotel call ahead and ask if they will provide a fridge for medical reasons/breast milk. We just went for my sister's graduation and our hotel provided one when I called ahead and asked. It even had a freezer for freezing my ice pack before we returned.
While this is true, I would plan to have something as a backup...at the Westin I stayed at in downtown Chicago, the fridge they gave me was this tiny desktop version (it's about the size of my actual PISA case!) There was NO way it would have held my 20+ bags of fresh milk :-)
Just an FYI...