According to studies, breastfeeding at work reduces absenteeism, improves productivity and employee satisfaction, and even spit-shines the company image. But while the stats may be glowing, pumping breastmilk in a cramped company lactation room while facing deadlines and yearning for your baby is another matter. Is there a better way to nurse and do your job?

IBM executive Cate Colburn-Smith thought so. While pumping in her company’s lactation room, she began scribbling down her thoughts, fears and questions into a notebook and leaving it for other nursing mothers to read. Instantly, a community was formed. As the mothers communicated with one another through the journal, they found support, camaraderie and advice on everything from breastfeeding to day-care. Colburn-Smith and her friend and colleague Andrea Serrette figured that if these notebooks were so helpful to the nursing mom circle at work, the wider world of working mothers could benefit as well.

With this mind, The Milk Memos was born. The book is a revelation, packed with mom-in-the-trenches advice about breastpumps, nannies and bad bosses. But The Milk Memos is also a story of women’s lives, revealed in the raw, emotional punch of the actual notebook entries, from the first tentative hellos to the poignant farewells as babies are weaned.

Say the authors:
‘We are thoroughly convinved that you don’t have to choose between having a career and being a great mom. We do both – and so can you.’

-- Cookie.com, April 2, 2007

“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.”

—Publisher’s Weekly, January 15, 2007

 

The Milk Memos is a moving and entertaining read with smart advice for any working mom.

—Redbook Magazine, March, 2007