That she could smell of a little wee, lotion and lots of greasy stuff. That you assume she is not available all the eight hours at work, but she is and her work is time away from her new born nursling. And most important that you'd know is she may not have given the bottle to her child yet. She may be nursing? She may be an expressing mom. So managers and recruiters there is a little equipment that you should know about - the breast pump. That which helps your employee work without compromising on her nutritive value as a mother. Why should you know about it? Else it gets plain annoying.
There are women who express who use that coffee break and lunch hour to step out to the nursing room with half a pound equipment and 8oz bottles. Your lack of knowledge could bring you to spew umpteen questions which may make a new mom shy away, why even from nursing? Well there are mums who take this - 'what's this equipment', 'where were you so long' questions so lightly and then there are not.
Sometimes I believe this should also be as a part of learning in "leaves section" or say what to expect when recruiting an employer back from her maternity somewhere in the books - so that managers ARE really equipped enough to understand these nuances much better. In my case - there used to be bag checks, I was working at two tandem locations, one location had all the security staff knowing what a breast pump is, made it so easy. So this lady will check my bag come across pump ask me "baby ka madam" for the baby? I say yeah they leave me. That's all. At another location I have to give this whole description about how a breast pump works, and no, it's not an equipment using which I can steal your code, no no it doesn't go into the baggage room I need my PISA with me. You know how annoying that gets?
Brings back memories :) and yeah this was a comment to a friend which was long enough to go to my blog, and it has gone blogpost now :)
