Work travel and pumping

Hi all, my twins are 10 mos and EBF. I am back at work and have two overnight work trips coming up. On both trips I'll be away from the babies for 36 hours. One trip is an hour long flight, the other is a just over 3 hour flight. I think I've got everything figured out for all the pumping I have to do, but looking for tips from anyone that has had to travel while pumping. I think I'm most worried about how I'm going to transport all the milk, which I'm guessing could be around 70 ounces! I really do not want to pump and dump. Here's my plan:

- I've got a Medela pump in style with wall adaptor, car adaptor and battery pack so I can pump anywhere.
- I've gotten an office set aside at the work locations I'll be at where I can pump
- I made sure the hotels I'm staying at have fridges
- I travelled last October with breastmilk and airport security was easy.. they scanned the milk in a machine to confirm it was breastmilk.

At work I store milk in 8 oz doctor browns bottles. This means I'd need around 9 of these to store all the milk I make. I'm thinking about storing the milk in freezer bags (but not actually freeze the milk) to minimize the space they take up and keep them all in one cooler with a few freezer ice packs.

How did others handle storing so much milk? Any other pointers or anything I've missed? Thanks! Jessica

 

Have you thought about mailing it home?
Schedule a stop at the ups/usps/fedex on your way to the airport. I don't know what it would cost to cold ship it but it might be easier than carrying it on the plane.

 

Unfortunately, I don't have any advice as I cancelled at the last minute the work trip I was planning to take last fall and now I no longer breastfeed or pump. But I remember trying to plan for all of the travel, hotel, conference arrangements, etc, so I feel your pain. I hope everything goes smoothly!

 

I spent the weekend away from my babies (car travel only) and it worked fine. I used the lansinoh freezer bags. They can hold up to 10oz if you aren't freezing (8 if you are) and if you lay them flat when you get back and do freeze they take up no room at all! The Medela bags that you can pump into directly don't really hold much milk. I would pump into bottles and then fill up lansinoh bags.
Also take some of the Medela microwave sterilize bags so if you are pumping somewhere and don't have time/space to wash well you can stick them dirty in the bag for storage, then rinse and throw in microwave to clean. I was weirded out about cleaning my pump parts in the hotel room sink. But I am also a bit of a germaphobe.

 

No advice, I just wanted to say that I admire you for trying to handle all those logistics. I pumped and dumped on business trips because I was just too much afraid that the EBM might not be safe, i.e. that the cooling chain might be interrupted somewhere or I might not be able to clean and sterilize the pump as well as I would like to.