This is going to get real, real fast. If you are a former client following along this blog, I know that I should not feel shame in needing to pump during your wedding, but I hope you don’t judge me too much for this post and my disclosures here on how it really goes down while pumping at a wedding.
I breastfed Calvin (both nursing + bottles of pumped milk) exclusively until he was about 8 months. After that, when my supply started to dwindle a bit we had to supplement a little with formula, and I began to switch to bottles of pumped milk- thanks a lot, baby teeth. The hardest part by far of this whole process was needing to pump during a wedding day. As a wedding photographer, my workday is not average. I do not have an office where I can take a legally required break, a refrigerator to store my milk, or even the ability to stop working for more than one 10 minute break during a 10-14 hour day of photography coverage. Working as a wedding photographer posed so many challenges with continuing to breastfeed. I want to share how I dealt some of these challenges for those of you photographers out there who may be worried about how to make this happen.
The first challenge: Packing. For every wedding I shot while breastfeeding, I had to bring the following:
-Pump + battery pack
-Storage bags
-Change of clothes + nursing pads in case I sprung a leak…
-Cover- usually a soft swaddling blanket
-Cooler + ice packs
This was the least challenging part of the process.
Timing. All wedding days for me are extremely high stress. There is no room for error and the day is go-go-go nonstop. Every moment of a wedding day is important. I am constantly balancing capturing candid emotional moments, cramming in styling and shooting details, managing the timeline, orchestrating an endless amount of portraits, etc. In full honesty, I usually don’t even have a chance to use the restroom until around hour 8 of a 10 hour day. Finding time to pump is HARD.
At every wedding day, I would have to arrive extremely early, and pump before I started working. I would then pump a second time, about 5 hours later during dinner or open dancing depending on the timeline of events for the reception. I would then pump a third time before I drove home about 3 hours later. Very often, pumping mid-wedding came at the expense of me eating. For an entire 8-14 hour day, I frequently wouldn’t be able to eat a full meal. This was rough. You can tell me to pack snacks as many times as you want, but when the bride’s mom is zipping up her wedding dress, her best friend is crying joyful tears, or I have to shoot the details before the guests enter the room, I am not going to whip out a sandwich. Light snacks in between driving to another venue were the best I could do…. but honestly, sometimes I had to pump while driving to the next venue… so there goes that plan. Somehow I am a creature who has adapted to not eating, drinking, or peeing the second I spot a girl in a white dress…. so I’m thankful for that.
Location. This was the worst. There is no where to do this. Every time except for a small handful of times, I pumped in my car. With only 15 minutes for this, I had no way to move my car – it was usually in the guest parking lot, and unfortunately with frequent drunken wedding guests roaming in and out of the parking lot. There was once when my second shooter who was ALSO a breastfeeding mom had to pump, and a wedding guest came up and knocked on her window, asking her for direction MID PUMP. I would have to do this as quickly as possible in my car, AC blasting, under a blanket, obsessing over my fear that a major event would be moved on the timeline and occur while I was away (my second shooter was ready to capture this, but still… I like to capture everything!)
The last challenge- Pain. Oh the pain of not pumping. Initially, my body was used to being drained every 2-3 hours. That means when I had to wait 6 hours into a wedding to pump, it was so very painful. Unfortunately your body adjusting to this means that your milk supply is dwindling from infrequent drainage.
The one thing I did not do which I would do next time- bring a manual hand pump in addition. If your pump fails, if you aren’t in an area where you can get to a car and can’t have a noisy pump in the guest bathroom, this will save you.
Overall, all of this worked out fairly well despite all of my complaining… I truly hated pumping at weddings, but it kept my baby on primarily breast milk for the first year of life, exclusively for 8 months. The takeaway? Its DOABLE. You can do it! Plan ahead, be prepared for your supply to start dwindling a bit, and plan the best you can in advance for how you can best make it work with what you need and what you have to work with.
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