When I went back to work after my baby was born, I checked ahead that I would have a space to pump. I was assured that I would have that space. When I arrived on the first day, there was an unused office designated as a space, but no one could find the key to it. I am a college professor and had an hour to pump before my next class. We frantically searched for a key to no avail, so I ran across campus to the women and gender studies building where there is a designated room. We couldn’t find the key to that room either. I plunked down in an empty classroom and pumped, hoping no one would come in. I was assured that I would get a key to the room in my building, and that in the meantime they would leave it unlocked so I could access it until the new key came in. The next day, I found the room unlocked, successfully pumped, and left the door open so that I could get back in again. The following day, I did this again, feeling relieved that I had a reliable access to the space. I decided to leave the pump in the room so I wouldn’t have to lug it back and forth. no one else was using the room that semester and I had permission to leave things there. The following day I found the room locked….with my pump locked inside. No one could find the key again. I felt like crying. A colleague who has a kid and had to pump at work had previously offered that I could use her office so I asked if I could use it today, she said “of course!” I told her I only needed 20 minutes and she went for a walk. I pulled my boobs out and started hand expressing into a bottle. I had never hand expressed before, but I had seen instructional videos so I hoped it would work. I made my hand into a c-shape, squished my boob back to my chest wall, and pulled my fingers forward, stretching the nipple out. Nothing happened. I tried several variations of this for a while and nothing happened again and again. Suddenly a stream of milk squirted out of me onto the filing cabinet next to my chair and a tear streamed down my cheek. I aimed the milk stream into the bottle and started squirting milk out into the bottle, so relieved! Suddenly the door popped open and another colleague walked in. One of the most highly respected and accomplished professors in the department. I hadn’t met him yet in person, but here was his first impression of me, shirt open, bare breasted, hunched over a tiny bottle, squeezing milk out of my swollen tits like a sweaty cow. “Oh sorry!” he said. “Oh sorry!” I said. He backed out of the room and closed the door. I finished pumping, way less milk than usual but more than nothing, wiped the filing cabinet, the chair, and everything down with alcohol wipes and left. I saw him in the hall and said, “Sorry about that, I’m done in there and I usually have a space to pump so you won’t have to worry about that happening again.” “Hey no worries, do what you have to do.” he said it in a casual, friendly and understanding way that I really appreciated. After three weeks, I finally got a key to the damn room and spent the rest of the semester pumping normally in private while relaxing, eating lunch, and scrolling through pictures of my baby on my phone. I always felt so weird gong back to a classroom full of unassuming college students after tucking my milky boobs back into my ragged milk stained bra under my “teacher blouse.” Going back to work and being away from my baby was hard enough, the pumping situation made it worse. I just wish the simple act of getting access to a space hadn’t been so hard. It made me feel unnecessarily embarrassed and like asking for an accommodation was burdensome and irritating. I’m grateful that my two colleagues were so nice when I had to use their space to hand express, but I shouldn’t have been in there in the first place. - anonymous