The Milk Memos: How Real Moms Learned to Mix Business with Babies-and How You Can, Too
This one-of-a-kind guide to balancing motherhood and work is based on actual journals kept by a group of IBM women during their visits to the company's employee lactation room.\ It all began when IBM manager Cate Colburn-Smith sat down in the company's employee lactation room, shed a few silent tears, and wrote the following on a paper towel: I'm a new mom and today is my first day back at work. Is anyone else using this room?\ Right away women responded, and the paper towel was eventually...
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This one-of-a-kind guide to balancing motherhood and work is based on actual journals kept by a group of IBM women during their visits to the company's employee lactation room. It all began when IBM manager Cate Colburn-Smith sat down in the company's employee lactation room, shed a few silent tears, and wrote the following on a paper towel: I'm a new mom and today is my first day back at work. Is anyone else using this room? Right away women responded, and the paper towel was eventually replaced by a series of notebooks, in which women offered one another advice and support on juggling work and a newborn. Based on the original notebooks, The Milk Memos is a heartwarming, encouraging (and often hilarious!) guide to working motherhood. It's one of the most existential moments any woman will face: sitting in a small room tucked away in the bowels of your company, pumping breast milk for a child so close to your heart-yet, at that moment, so far away. The Milk Memos records the voices of mothers who, while struggling with the difficulties of blending their two lives, prove that women don't have to choose between work and family. Their thoughts on how it can be done will inspire women everywhere. This invaluable book weaves the actual Milk Memos journal entries with information-packed sections on such topics of great concern to working moms as: - finding a private place to pump breast milk at work and establishing a routine that you can maintain despite your busy workday; - establishing the right daycare solution; - getting a decent night's sleep with a new baby so that you can shine (or at least glimmer!) during business hours; and - negotiating flextime, part-time, or a job share with an employer. The ultimate gift for any new mom who will soon return to work, The Milk Memos is destined to become a classic on the parenting shelf. Publishers Weekly Colburn-Smith and Serrette aim to make the impossible a little less so with their guide for working nursing moms. "We are thoroughly convinced," they write, "that you don't have to choose between having a career and being a great mom." The genesis of the book was in a tiny lactation room at IBM, where an impromptu mothers' group formed. Pumping away in the former janitor's closet, the IBM moms communicated with each other through notebooks about their struggles, woes and joys. Sections of the notebooks are reproduced, interwoven with practical advice. While at times the book reads like an ad for Medela breast pumps, the guidance is sound. Choosing child care, spilled breast milk, picking the right pump, evil bosses, plugged ducts, low milk production (breasts that turn out to be "Milk Duds") and the like are written about both informatively and humorously. In this solid resource, Colburn-Smith and Serrette do their best to be all-inclusive, careful not to judge those who supplement with formula or decide to wean before the baby's first birthday. (Mar.)Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
\ Publishers WeeklyColburn-Smith and Serrette aim to make the impossible a little less so with their guide for working nursing moms. "We are thoroughly convinced," they write, "that you don't have to choose between having a career and being a great mom." The genesis of the book was in a tiny lactation room at IBM, where an impromptu mothers' group formed. Pumping away in the former janitor's closet, the IBM moms communicated with each other through notebooks about their struggles, woes and joys. Sections of the notebooks are reproduced, interwoven with practical advice. While at times the book reads like an ad for Medela breast pumps, the guidance is sound. Choosing child care, spilled breast milk, picking the right pump, evil bosses, plugged ducts, low milk production (breasts that turn out to be "Milk Duds") and the like are written about both informatively and humorously. In this solid resource, Colburn-Smith and Serrette do their best to be all-inclusive, careful not to judge those who supplement with formula or decide to wean before the baby's first birthday. (Mar.)\ Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalWriting for women who are trying to balance their commitment to their careers with their desire to love and nurture a newborn child, IBM executives Colburn-Smith and Serrette have compiled this journal/guidebook on successfully blending the two. Empathetic and often humorous, they relate their adventures of pumping breast milk at work, getting enough sleep, and finding the right day-care solution. Per the book's title, the book centers on breastfeeding and examines the intricacies of the art—making sure the baby gets enough to eat, storing pumped milk, and healing sore breasts. Nursing mothers, whether working or staying at home, will find camaraderie and assistance. Recommended for public libraries.\ \ \ —Deborah Bigelow\ \
