PUMPED!

- Shari Sonta, Contributing Writer

I met the Tasty Girls at a meeting recently and they invited me to become a Tasty Blogger!  I’m so excited to blog about being a working mom.  I hope to enlighten and hopefully raise social consciousness on the exasperation of being a full time working mom.  Actually I am typing this as I am pumping which puts multi-tasking into a whole new dimension, something we working  moms have come accustomed to.  The pumping moms of the millennium have replaced the intense soccer moms of the 1990’s.

I don’t care what position Working Mother Magazine takes…being a full time working mom in today’s corporate culture really, really stinks.  I keep hearing rumors of companies that offer flextime, job sharing and telecommuting options, but I think that’s a color picture in the land of Oz, Inc.  If you are “over the rainbow” and reading this from your home office, I hope this flexibility really does help make your life easier, although not to insinuate that you achieved a blissful balance of work and family.  Entrepreneurs with their intense schedules have it even worse, I think, having owned two businesses of my own in the past.  But, I hope to offer some laughs, smiles, and inspiration to the trials and tribulations of being a working, pumping mom. 

There is so much to talk about: pesky co-workers, schlepping around a breast pump on  business travel, perky nipples that are constantly on alert (and showing through your button down shirts), utilizing the 44 seconds a day of quality time you have to yourself, saying the word “pump” around male co-workers (and having them retract after being grossed out), dealing with your new role as a mom, how to not get fat or unhealthy, etc, etc.

About me:  I am Mommy to an adorable and (already) charismatic six-month-old Audrey and married to my wonderful husband Bill.  We live in a residential section of Philadelphia.  One of the world’s largest urban park systems, Fairmount Park, runs through our neighborhood and we love having trails for hiking and mountain biking in our backyard.  However, I schlep an hour each way to work in New Jersey and my work day (including commute) is a minimum of 11 hours a day. Before I had a baby, I didn’t mind the commute.  Now it’s just downright wrong, but we are way too busy to do anything about it.  I am a category director in the Natural/Organic product business.  I am important to you if you are trying to get your Natural/Organic grocery item on a supermarket shelf, which is how I met the Tasty Girls.  I have a Master’s Degree in Environmental Policy from Tufts University, where my research was in toxic chemicals in cosmetics (and you need to be very cautious about what you apply to your skin when breastfeeding or when pregnant!  A topic for a future blog).  In the past I had a Public Relations/Marketing consulting biz, operated Love Bites—Cooking with Aphrodisiacs, and worked for Whole Foods Market.  I know a lot of random stuff about natural products, aphrodisiac folklore, and the food business that just crams up my brain.

The food industry, organic or not, is a low margin, high volume industry and is run very tightly.  Organic is still a tiny percent of total food sales, but is still one of the fastest growing categories, and a lot of people are looking to make a buck in the industry.  Unfortunately, some are cheapening the integrity of the organic concept.  I loved meeting the Tasty Baby Girls because they aren’t just launching an organic baby food, they are launching an entire organic lifestyle in a fun, stylish way that is very approachable.  By feeding little Audrey Tasty Baby, I feel like I was invited back into a club, like the Girl Scouts, and am now doing my duty to protect the environment and the health of my baby with the glee of a little girl doing an arts and crafts project involving paste and popsicle sticks.

Here’s a picture of my daughter Audrey. 

Swoosh, swoosh goes the pumping machine.