Crying Over Spilled Milk

It’s 3 AM and I’m bent over the kitchen countertop sucking up breastmilk with a syringe and pouring it into a small measuring container. I’m not planning on salvaging the milk, I just want to know how much of a screwup I actually am. According to the container, I’m about 4 milliliters worth. This is the closest I’ve ever been to crying over spilled milk.

Tao was born with a tongue tie that makes breastfeeding difficult for him. We have an appointment to get the tie removed next week, but for now he has to do his best to latch and suck without full movement of his tongue. As a result, he has lost weight faster than he should the first week. “I feel like we’re living paycheck to paycheck,” she says as she passes over a container holding 15 milliliters of breastmilk, just enough for his next feeding. Well, 11 millimeters now.

The next time you think of telling someone not to cry over spilled milk, pause to consider what that “milk” might mean to them. It might be bigger than coffee and cereal.

Think of the stressors in your life like rocks at the edge of a calm body of water. The water is your emotional state, the rocks are stressors in your life, and the ripples they create when thrown in are the emotional and physical tole of those stressors. When smaller rocks are thrown into your water, you are able to return to calm more easily as the ripples they create don’t stretch out as far. But larger rocks create waves that can linger and cause damage.

What are your small rocks? How about your large ones? What do you do to bring yourself back to calm when stressors come into your life?

It’s important to remember what might be a small rock for you could be a large rock for someone else. Talk to your teammates about what causes stress in the workplace and make time to check in with each other to understand what’s going on outside of work that might be creating ripples.