A Fine Specimen

Most days, I manage to be both a mom and a doctor.  Which leads some people to think that I must have it more together than average, sort of an "I Don't Know How She Does It" phenomenon, except that I'm not as skinny or as perky as Sarah Jessica Parker.  Spoiler alert:  I am about to destroy this myth forever, by telling you a story about...urine specimen cups. 

I know certain things about myself.  One of them is that whatever I don't do the night before (pack lunch, add something to the briefcase) has a high likelihood of falling right out of my brain in the morning rush.  I know this, and yet I occasionally go off to bed muttering the deluded phrase, "I'll just grab it in the morning".  Yesterday I applied said delusion to my breast pump parts.  The pump itself lives under my desk at work, but all the little plastic gadgets have to come home and go through the sterilizing cycle, then come back to work the next day to keep the dairy running.  It is admittedly a little complicated.  On this particular morning I didn't realize my grave error until the moment I pulled into my parking space.

(Sidebar:  I call it "my" parking space because it is the same spot in the parking garage that I choose every single workday. My brain is so cluttered that I will otherwise forget where I parked and have to wander around a five-level parking deck looking for myself.  I don't think anyone else actually considers it "my" space, but thankfully no one else seems to want it.)

So there I was with a set of vigorously lactating breasts, an extra-long workday that involved three planned pumping sessions, and nothing with which to extract milk.  I contemplated various unappealing options including an hour-long round trip home during lunch, asking my already overloaded hubby to rescue me, or going upstairs to the NICU and begging for a "new mom" kit.  Which I most certainly don't qualify for, but they don't make an "old mom with breastfeeding brain" kit. 

Then it hit me.  Wasn't I missing a set of parts anyway?  And weren't they probably in the car somewhere?  A quick scramble in the floorboards, and I had a set of parts that could be washed and do for the day. But what was I going to put the milk IN?  You guessed it...this is where the cups come in. 

A quick trip into the clinic supply room and I had a handful of brand new urine specimen cups that sealed up Mommy Milk just as well as those fancy Medela suckers do.  Day salvaged, I went about my business. 

The only awkward part was last night, when I had to bring the hubby up to date on the slight change in the dairy supply chain.  "The stuff in the fridge in urine specimen cups is milk.  It's clean.  Don't ask."