Soon after giving birth to her second and third child – a set of twins – Kate Torgersen traveled home from a 4-day business trip lugging a 26-pound cooler of breast milk thinking “I can’t be the only woman going through this. There has got to be another way.”
Turns out, there wasn’t – yet.
Between pumping sessions, nursing sessions, her day job – not to mention caring for three kids under the age of three – Kate was exhausted. “The challenge of breastfeeding as a working mom is that thing that everyone talks about, but there is no fix,” she says as she reflects back on the months following her return to the working world.
Kate took it upon herself to create a fix with Milk Stork, the first and only breast milk travel solution for working moms. “I knew I had to focus on the things that excited me the most or I was going to lose steam,” Kate remembers.
She asked herself the questions that she and so many working moms struggle to answer: what does this look like inside my hotel room? What kind of cooler makes sense? How can I find a solution that lets me continue breastfeeding without compromising my career goals?
The process Kate landed on is simple. You input your arrival, departure and hotel information into the Milk Stork website before leaving for your trip. Your order is there when you arrive – complete with everything you’ll need to pump and pack your breast milk in the privacy of your hotel room. Then, you take the pre-labeled package down to the front desk to ship home or tote it back yourself.
“The workforce is now 50/50 between men and women. Milk Stork is here to normalize working motherhood,” Kate explains. “It’s my mission to ensure Milk Stork is available to all working, breastfeeding moms.”
Milk Stork is one of the many benefits The Home Depot offers to support new moms. Check out how you can take advantage of latest addition to our lineup of benefits by visiting milkstork.com/homedepot.
Photos by Paige Dunn
