#momlife…with a breast pump

Whenever I have to pump, I think of Kate Middleton.

Not in a pervy “I love it when an electrical machine fondles my breasts” kind of way. In an “I hope princesses endure this hell, too” kind of way.

Nearly every nursing mom pumps at least once in awhile. A number of us do it exclusively. And every last one of us knows it’s a particular brand of demoralizing, dish-making feminine torture.

Including, one would assume, Princess Kate.

Because unless she hired some kind of modern-day wet nurse to lactate on her behalf (entirely possible), she has, at one point or another, suffered the indignity of her partner walking in just as she reaches too far for her phone, uncoupling her breast from its silicone prison and ripping off a big, wet fart.

Charming Prince William was undoubtedly good natured about it, but still. It likely didn’t take him long to mumble something about needing the loo and then quietly calling his rescue helicopter buddies to get him the heck out of there.

And poor Kate would be left sitting on her designer couch feeling so much like a cow – as if women need more reasons to feel like that – with her sweater askew and the cup of her greying, fraying nursing bra rolled down into an extra underboob while a hypnotic portable milking machine sucked away at her red, misshapen nipple.

“MAC-aroon! MAC-aroon! MAC-aroon!”

(Shut UP, Medela, about the macaroons. We are hungry enough as it is. Oh my god.)

And if Princess Kate endured that, she’s probably no stranger, either, to the mortification of listening to her breast milk slop stickily into a bottle while trying to convince herself Prince William can’t also hear it in the next room where he’s trying to read.

In that moment, Kate would have undoubtedly felt like one of a thousand industrial dairy cows, trapped inside a stall covered in unidentifiable filth and snacking on anything edible that happens to pass by.

At least, that’s how I always feel.

It brings me comfort to think that princesses might, too.