"Kindness is a gift everyone can afford to give." In honor of National Random Acts of Kindness Day, we wanted to share with you five ways to show random kindness to a working mom who breast pumps.
1. The office break room becomes an employee community gathering quickly around lunch hours. Don't touch the cooler bag in the work fridge labeled with the words "Do not touch." Nursing moms worked hard to pump and store the milk in that cooler bag. Our natural tendency is to give in to temptation and do the exact opposite. Please don't be curious about what's inside or try to move it to make room for your lunch leftovers.
2. This sounds sounds simple enough, but often go undone. Offer actively nursing coworker water or a refreshing drink. She's making someone else's full daily supply of nutrition (aka breast milk) and simply giving her a glass of water or tea could help her out tremendously.
3. When you see the blinds down in her office or in the shared space she uses for pumping, kindly wait until she's finished and pulled the blinds up before you ask her your work questions. If she can answer you via text or email, she will - but knocking on the window or door to ask if she's "done yet" won't get your question answered any sooner because now she'll have to spend more time pumping to get another let-down to make enough milk for her baby's bottles.
4. Offer to carry one of her giant bags into the building from her car or from the train. She likely needs to carry her purse, her pump bag, her cooler bag plus her laptop and work bag and maybe even her own lunch bag. She probably misses the days of bringing just her purse!
5. Most importantly, tell her she's an awesome mom doing a great job for her baby. Just hearing that can make a world of difference in uplifting her mood to get her through the working hours.
These five examples of kindness could really make her day and we can all afford to make someone else's day nicer.
