So, my family and I moved over the summer and I literally have not seen my breast pump in months. There’s a good chance I may need it again someday, but as a non-breastfeeding mom of a toddler, it’s delightfully far from my mind most of the time. I had a love-hate relationship with device, and I understood what it was and how to use it and why it'w as beneficial. I can’t imagine how confused my son must have felt when I used it in his presence. I mean, what could a baby be thinking when mom uses a breast pump?
I have a few guesses, of course, especially now that my baby is a toddler and I am more familiar with his personality. Typically, if I was pumping in front of my son, I was preemptively trying to accommodate a missed feeding that was coming up. As in, my work schedule that day was looking to be completely impossible, or my partner and I were going to a wedding while grandparents took care of our little one or, occasionally, I was trying to remedy a problem (as in our few-weeks old baby needed more nourishment so I was told to feed him and then pump immediately after). Of course, I also took advantage of my breast pump when I was fighting mastitis and my son wasn’t terribly hungry.
Whatever the reason — and trust me when I say that breastfeeding will provide you with more than a few of them — the breast pump was a means to an end, and a way to get from one feeding to the next. Here’s what I imagine he was thinking about it when that thing was in use, because I'm pretty convinced he had some feelings.