There is a UNICEF statistic that should make every employer uncomfortable. Around 80% of mothers in the UK start breastfeeding, but by six months, the time when a lot of new mothers start going back to the office, fewer than one percent of babies are exclusively breastfed. I’d say there’s a strong correlation there: work and breastfeeding remain stubbornly at odds.  

Apparently, I’m onto something. According to data consolidated by the British Journal for Midwifery, most women do indeed stop exclusively breastfeeding because of returning to work pressure. In short, the impossibility of planning a professional life around a body that does not run to a schedule is holding women's careers back.  

I am one of those women. Three times over. 

Before I had my first child, I’d been sold the dream of freelance journalism as the working mother's holy grail. Flexible, autonomous, entirely on my own terms, this was, I was told, going to be my opportunity to fulltime parent and keep my toes dipped into work, a notion I now wholly refute (having it all is a concept that must be removed from our collective consciousness).  

What nobody mentioned to this leaking, swollen new Mummy, was that finding a news story while sitting in my husband’s old joggers, with a small, but surprisingly hungry little gremlin on my breast, would be considerably harder than the theory suggested. I had no idea what was going on, let alone the bandwidth or inclination to find out. My career did not end, but it certainly contracted – as did my sanity.  

There were events I could not attend, press days I passed over, and cover features I couldn’t bear to write. I was too tired, but mainly I couldn’t get out of the house because my breast pump plugged into the wall. Yes, I am that old. The industry I loved began to feel like something happening to other people, in rooms I was no longer in. 

As I look back now, I realise the professional cost of my commitment to breastfeeding did not culminate in one single moment, rather it showed up as a hundred small surrenders, which were almost impossible to name while they were happening. The one exception was when I took the Eurostar to Paris for an interview with Kristen Stewart. I left my eldest, then a wriggly 5-month-old, with my Mum (and a Nanny, no chances taken here), pumping and dumping using a hand-crippling manual contraption only to pour the milk down the tiny, stainless-steel sink on the train. Nonetheless, I arrived at the interview feeling, briefly, entirely like myself again. A journalist. A woman with somewhere to be. I wish I had found a way to do it more often. 

Yes, I noticed the commissions I didn’t pitch and the editors I couldn’t get out from behind the feeding cushion to meet, but in those moments convenience and being a good Mum prevailed.  

What I notice now, talking to friends who are still, unbelievably, having babies, is that something has shifted. The conversations are different, and more importantly the options for dovetailing work and motherhood are so much more expansive. One friend recently told me how she pumped in the back of an Uber between meetings, completely untethered from a wall socket, and presumably entirely in control of her own schedule. Another friend attended a work conference while exclusively breastfeeding her four-month-old. Again, an on-the-go pump and a selection of heavy-duty ice packs and equally impressive thermos cooler meant the milk was good for bedtime. What I loved best was that neither of them thought either situation was particularly remarkable. That, in itself, is something to celebrate. 

Here at theALLBRIGHT, we worked with Momcozy, to supercharge our Motherhood Works campaign. Together we landed on one single idea: that mothers deserve to be put first. It is why this partnership has felt right from the start, and why 14 years on from my first breastfeeding rodeo, I’m excited to compare my experience with those of working mothers today.  

There’s been progress!  

If I had my time again, and I won’t because that ship has more than passed, it’s out in the wild ocean now, I would invest in a Momcozy wearable pump. Not because I know the brand now, but because it goes out of its way to make mothering and working a peaceful coexistence. A product that is discreet, wireless and designed to fit around a working life rather than against it, is the kind of tool that does not just solve a practical problem, it changes what feels possible for all mothers. 

This is not a small thing. It is the whole point.