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Working Moms
Traveling for work without baby
Okay, I need to get ready for my trip July 12 to Georgia for two weeks. I will be coming hom Friday night to Sunday.
While I am training, we will be having several breaks, so it is not an issue for time to pump. I've called down to the facility and will have a first aid room I can use to pump. And, I will be using a hospital grade pump so I hope this helps to make sure my supply doesn't tank. Of course, I am still scared I won't produce enough, but I am going to be confident.
What I need the most help with is how to store the milk and transferring the milk. I did find the tsa website that it is considered medical equipment and I can bring it onboard. Any experence? Do you use a cooler with freezer packs? Do you freeze it at the hotel or just use the fridge in the room? I don't want to pump all week and get to the airport and have to dispose it. I would cry. Thank you in advance! I will be doing another trip in August and one overseas in December, so I want to get prepared.
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Re: Traveling for work without baby
Hi, there!
EDIT TO ADD (and DELETE): I just noticed that you are coming home mid-way through...sorry about that. I don't know how I skipped over that. So I am erasing the stuff that doesn't apply to you.
Bring a soft-sided cooler and pack the milk with gel packs and you are good to go to carry it on the plane. Just let the TSA agent know that you have refrigerated breastmilk in your cooler. They will inspect it, but often not open any. One agent wanted all my bags of milk to be 3 oz or less a piece, but I think he was just confused.
I am very conservation with the time frame for freezing (if something is going to go in the freezer, I only refrigerate before freezing for up to 48 hours). If it is going to stay refrigerated until feeding, I've kept it up to 7 or 8 days (as long as it doesn't smell, obviously). Some moms will freeze milk that has been refrigerated up to 8 days and haven't had any problems.
Oh thank you. I am not stressing about it as much as I was a a month ago when I found out. I am more stressed about my kiddos and daddy for two wks at a time without me and the weekend home will be crazy busy.
The cooler doesn't count against your carryon does it? Also, can you buy gelpacks at walmart?
Here is a link to the TSA web site. If I was traveling without DD I think I would print this and have it with me just incase I encounter a clueless agent. If I had to dump my BM I am likely to get arrested for going off on an agant LOL
https://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/children/formula.shtm
I used a soft-sided cooler to carry it on. I kept the milk in my room frig in the lansinoh bags. Each bag had about 8 oz in it (I was not planning to freeze the bags). The night before I flew home, I took my gel packs to the front desk and asked them to freeze them for me because my room frig did not have a freezer. I put them in a plastic bag and used a sharpie to write my name, room number, and date on the bag.
You should be able to buy gel packs at walmart or pretty much anywhere that sells coolers. They should be with the coolers in the store. If you can't find gel packs, you could always freeze one or two bags of milk before you fly home to keep the rest cool, just make sure to use them within 24 hours of thawing.
At the checkpoint, I took everything out of the cooler and put it all in a bin together. I told the TSO at the front of the lane that it was breastmilk, but honestly, none of the screeners seemed to care much.
I agree to take the print out just in case. If a screener gives you any trouble (like the weird 3 oz bag thing a pp mentioned), ask for a surpervisor.
Yes - I've done this and yes, I've done 2 back to back weeks with coming home inbetween for the weekend. I've pasted below what I did. Let me know if you have more questions:
I don't like checking bags and avoid it at all costs, so here's what I did. I purchased a professional ladies "bag" from Wilson's leather (about $50). It's 15" long, 12" tall and 5.5" wide. It also came with a small matching purse. Inside I am able to carry my laptop, my pump (not the whole PISA bag, just the pump), a square tupperware container (which inside has 2 sets of pump parts & tubing), 2 hardsided containers, BM storage bags, wallet, phone, magaize, black sharpie marker and a pashmina shawl. Inside my carry on suitcase, I pack very stragically - reusing pants, same shoes throughout the week, no hairdryer (use the hotel one); roll clothes instead of fold, and the purse. What I did for the milk was bring along a soft sided cooler (12 can size). At the hotel, I would fill it with ice 2x day (morning and evening) and kept the bags of milk inside on ice. Works awesome. On the day of departure, I would pack my bag so that there is enough room that the cooler could sit inside my suitcase. This is necessary since some TSA will require you to PROVE you can fit the cooler inside so you only effectively have 2 carryons. I position the cooler so that when I'm rolling my suitcase, the cooler is sitting right side up inside. You 'll need to pull the cooler out for TSA to inspect. Again I place the cooler inside the suitcase when it's time to board the plane (flight attendents can be a stickler about this, hence the reason I stick it inside); however when I'm on the plane, I quickly remove it before putting it in the overhead and place it under the seat in front of me along with the "professional bag".
In my experience, the "medically" necessary fridge is so tiny (as in desk top book sized) that there's no way it can hold a week's worth of milk, let alone a couple days.
Couple of other things....the pashmina - - I use not only to keep warm, but it works as a GREAT cover up when nursing in the restroom or elsewhere in public. Of course if it's winter or you are in a cold climate, this might not work well.
I bring along 2 sets of gel ice packs and have the hotel restaurant freeze them the night before departure. I keep them in the cooler with ice until when I get to the airport. Before going through security, I dump all the ice out in the restroom sink and just leave the ice packs. After clearing security, I usually get more ice from the McDonalds or whatever, but have also used just the 2 frozen ice packs just fine.
I keep all the milk in the storage bags and use the sharpie to record the date and oz info on the bag. Since I first pump into the hard containers, it makes it easy to know how much milk before putting into the bags. I keep all the milk fresh and then freeze once home so nothing spoils (I've always gone by the following: 8 hours room temp, 8 days in the fridge). I do carry the Medela cleaning clothes so that I can clean my pump parts. For two of my trips I knew I'd have access to a microwave, so I brought along the steam clean bags.
i traveled for work several times while pumping for DS. i had a soft-sided cooler that i brought with me.
while in the hotel, i stored the milk in lansinoh plastic bags in the hotel fridge (i had to request one, but they should not charge you a fee, since it is technically for medical needs.)
to fly back home, i brought a lot of empty ziploc freezer bags. i filled them with ice to function as the ice packs. then i packed the milk bags up in the cooler. if you have a long layover, you can just refill the ziploc bags with ice from the food court.
just tell the security folks you have a cooler of breastmilk, it's totally legal, and there is no limit on how much you can bring. (one trip i brought home over 100 oz!)
good luck!
I've been lucky that every time I've done this, the fridge they sent up was always at least the size of a dorm fridge (on two occasions, it was the big dorm fridge that come up all the way waist high). For this reason, I would definitely make the medical necessity fridge request. It is free, so it couldn't hurt. At each of the hotels in which I stayed, they had fridges they rent out on request. If it is medical necessity, they just don't charge for it.
I didn't read the other posts, but I travel just about every week for work, infact I have been gone the entire month of June, just home on the weekends until this week! Back to back for 4 weeks. YIKES.
If you have a fridge in your room, you are good to go. I have found most hotel fridges run cold and tends to freeze or partially freeze everything. I have came home and put in the freezer again with no problems. If the hotel has no medically nesessary fridges (very few do not) they will upgrade you for free to a room that does have one.. even if it's a suite. Don't hesitate to ask.
I just bring the soft sided cooler that came with my PISA advanced, a nd I keep it inside my pump bag. I have had to stuff it and on the day I come home, I've had to keep the milk at room temp since there has been no room in the cooler. (good thing it can last for 10 hours at room temp)
I bring freezer bags and every night or so, I will divy up the milk in my pump bottles into the bags. I usually bring about 6 bottles, so I have some empty ones to use, while the rest hold the days quota before putting into the freezer bags. (plus the freezer bags are easy to sqwish into the cooler bag to come home)
As far as TSA, with my DD, they never checked my milk, but this time, every airport runs a test with a little gun thingy on the bottles. SOme airports just do the bag, and some do the milk bottles. Luckily when I first went back to work and was pumping 30 ounces a day and gone for 5 days (read.. ALOT of bags of milk) they did not do this test on every one! SOme airports do however. (Salt Lake is one of them, but now I don't pump as much)
Ice packs are fine to go thru security with your pump. I use the hard Medela one.
Bring your hooter hider with you! It has come in handy so many times! I had an entire row to myself on a cross country flight so I pumped in my seat using that. As well at the Orlando airport, there was NO family restroom, so I pumped in a corner at a gate with it over me. Plus it's nice to have to lay your stuff on in dirty family restrooms. Most family restrooms have a plug. You mentioned Georgia... I go there alot and one particular wing does not have a plug in the family restroom, so I'd have to walk all the way to the other wing to pump. ( I wanted to save my battery pack for the plane since it's a 5+ hour flight home from there)
SInce I travel so much and I nurse for 1 year, I notice where all the family restrooms are in every airport. lol I have found that Salt Lake has THE best airport to pump! They have infant care rooms just inside the regular womens restroom. COmplete with a sink and a chair! Seattle too has a nursing room just off the kids play area. It's not a locked room, but it's large with 3 chairs or so and an end table thingy. I've never seen anyone else in the room and I move the table and chair to a corner and face away from the door just in case and get free wi-fi while pumping. SInce this is my home airport, I have a routine of going thru security, getting a Starbucks and then hitting my pumping room before boarding the plane.
GL!