Last week I had one of those weeks where pretty much everything went wrong. It was a series of small failures — one tiny cut after another.

Sometimes I can weather the bad luck and move right along without missing a beat, but last week my sleep deprivation teamed up with my mounting stress level and I just couldn’t really stay positive.

Early in the week last week, I got up extra-early for an earlier-than-usual work meeting with some important higher-ups. Even though the meeting was a mere 10 minutes before when I normally arrive to work, for whatever reason, (having a baby to deal with in the morning? I don’t know) getting into work 15 minutes earlier than my usual time is like exponentially more challenging. I actually had to wake Prim up that morning so I could feed her before I left, (because of course she would be sleeping later than normal on a day when I have to leave early) which made me feel that twinge of “mom guilt” I (unsuccessfully) try to avoid.

I made it onto an earlier BART train — one that would arrive a full 20 minutes before my meeting. I didn’t get a seat (of course, because it’s BART) so I spent the entire ride bracing myself against the erratic train movements, teetering in my heeled boots. At the end of the usually-35-minute ride, we got stuck in the transbay tube due to “traffic” ahead of the train. What would normally take 6 minutes (riding from West Oakland to Embarcadero), turned into 20+ minutes of stopping and starting, making my ride in close to an hour.

I knew I was running a bit behind, and planned to hightail it out of the station once we finally arrived at Embarcadero — but no such luck. An escalator was broken and blocked off, which meant that there was a mass of people all trying to exit the station via climbing the stairs (apparently verrrry slowly). I was stuck moving at a snail’s pace, watching the minutes tick by as the meeting time got closer and closer.

I finally got out of the station and raced to the office, arriving 5 minutes late for the meeting, but having nothing with me as a result, because I didn’t have time to stop by my desk before heading to the meeting. It ended up being fine, but I felt completely frazzled and unprepared due to my stressful commute in.

Then, to add insult to injury, the hour-long meeting ran over — right into my first scheduled pumping session. Because I hadn’t had time to stop by my desk, I hadn’t been able to grab my pump stuff before the meeting, which meant I had to travel from the 15th floor down to my desk the 6th floor, grab my pump stuff, then get back up to the 10th floor to the lactation room I’d booked. This was made even more complicated by the fact that the elevators in our building run from floors 1-7 and 7-15, which meant my trip was: floor 15 to 7 (switch elevators) floor 7 to 6, then floor 6 to 7 (switch elevators) floor 7 to 10.

I finally had to excuse myself from the meeting, even though it was still going on — and so fun to fret about potentially having to explain to the many men in the room: “Oh, I have to leave to go pump… y’know, milk. From my breasts.” I ran down to get my pump stuff and made it back up to the lactation room on the 10th floor — but I had lost 13 minutes of my 30 minutes of pumping time.

Those of you who have pumped at work know that it’s a process, and it takes a solid 20-30 minutes to get everything put together and set up, pump, then break everything down and put it all away. And given that I had a meeting right after the session (and the fact that the lactation rooms get booked well in advance), I didn’t have the option of extending my pump time beyond half past the hour.

Well, surprise surprise, I was so stressed from the entire morning’s events, I couldn’t relax enough to get a let down and pumped a mere 1/2 an ounce. Given that I’m able to only pump three times while I’m at work (and the first session is usually the best of the day), this was a huge loss. I knew I wouldn’t be able to come close to covering what Prim would be eating that day with only two sessions left. And even though I have a giant stash of frozen milk at home (thank goodness), this was still so frustrating and felt like a terrible waste of time (I mean, why pump if you’re going to get nothing out of it??)

The rest of the week went downhill from there. I drove 30 minutes to pick up Prim’s birth certificate while she napped the next day, only to realize that it was Veteran’s Day and the office was closed (so not only did I waste an hour of my time, I also wasted the entirety of Prim’s nap, plus gas. Hooray.)

So, needless to say, last week was not a win. I don’t have lots of awesome pictures for you this week because I didn’t manage to break out my camera amidst the lows; so, sorry for that. Here’s hoping that next week’s posts will be better (at least visually).

And hey, things can only go up from here, right?