On the first day of training, Jackie kept the kids. I showed her where the milk was and told her to use the fresh milk in the refrigerator first (before using frozen milk).

But when I got home, I learned that David poured out 8 ounces of breastmilk from the fridge because he "thought it was old".

I was fuming for hours if not days over learning that. He said later he had already apologized, and I guess that's possible, but if so I was too upset to hear it yet. I told him in front of Jackie that I was going to hook the breast pump up to him until he produced 8 ounces.

I was too pissed about the milk to take any pictures, that's for sure. I'm already stressed about having enough milk for her once I start back to work. She always takes more from a bottle than I can produce when I'm away because I don't have as much time to pump as I would have to feed her if I were home. That plus everyone always seems to need more milk than she gets from me to get her to fall asleep.

Did you know that human milk costs between $3 and $184.83 an ounce? So David owes me (and Eva) BIGTIME. Really, I'm trying to forgive and forget. I am.

And this post reminds me that I haven't even written yet about what happened on the last day of school.

The day where we had a weird schedule because of finals and early dismissal. The third day I'd been back at work. And so I was sharing the keys to the book room, a place that I helped find for a new colleague to use for pumping at the first of the year when she returned from maternity leave.

(I'm a lactivist like that, you know. Not that I should win any awards, but I try to help when I can and be supportive of other breastfeeding, working moms because I know how it is. My sister Amy should win an award for what she accomplished at Lockheed, a very male-dominated workplace, making it possible for other moms to pump and therefore continue to breastfeed.)

So now Jennifer's baby Elena is 8 months old, and she can pump whenever. But I asked her if she could cover my class for a few minutes during a final because I hadn't had a break (because of the weird schedule). She came in and watched the kids taking their test and I went to pump. And I was not in the room five minutes, had not yet let down, when I heard a key turning in the lock of the door.

In an instant the door was open, but my back was to the door, and I said, "Excuse me, I'm in here!" But the person with the key kept coming in, even though she knew what was going on. She said, "I'm just counting books." And she walked on in and said something like, "I don't know how you do it. I was home with my kids when they were little." And I'm thinking, if I were sitting on the toilet, would you come in and sit on my lap? Because that's how it felt. There I was, all exposed and in shock, and now it's evident that my milk is NOT going to let down--it's a REFLEX that depends on being relaxed. Yeah, right! So I closed up shop as quickly as I could and got out of there. I did not go back there the next day; I found another safer location for the next day and the next week. (Thanks again, Charis!)

Good NIGHT, I still cannot believe the GALL.

So later that day, we got the news that Eva was going to have health insurance after all. Long story short, David didn't notify his Human Resources department OFFICIALLY about Eva's birth until she was 31 days old. The policy gives employees 30 days, but it would be an understatement to say they're not proactive about letting people know that. When he inquired about an exception because his employer and the insurance company were each saying the problem was with the other party, he was met with something like, "If we do it for you, we'd have to do it for the others." Because this happens so frequently? I'm no human resources expert, but that tells me that they might need to let their employees know what is expected. Our HR department at work does a much better job of communicating with us.

So anyway David wrote a letter about why they should make an exception and they did. So we needed a birth certificate to get her all enrolled. Which meant I had to take a trip to get a copy from the health department, past downtown. So I called and got an address and headed that way after school, but I couldn't find the building. And after several calls to David and his search on Google maps, etc., we discovered a weakness of Google maps. It was just WRONG about where I needed to go. Google sent me south of the freeway, when I needed to go north. Anyway eventually I got there (after calling them again). The building looked like it stood still since 1960 and the room I found where I needed to go had signs all over the place. I wished I had my camera because the signs were comical to me. Conflicting and confusing information about what to do combined with reminders to mind your children, not let them climb on the chairs, etc. But I got the birth certificate. And now Eva's insured. Good thing there wasn't anything scary since she was born!