My sister and I went to Hongkong for a breastfeeding conference. Without our kids. For about 36 hours. And that merited never-ending goodbyes, and buckets of tears from us mommies.
We pumped, and we pumped, and we pumped. We pumped on Cebu Pacific --- kudos to Cebu Pacific FAs for voluntarily moving us to the second row so we can pump to our heart's content. Oh, and I had a lola on the other aisle who was really interested in what we were doing under our nursing bibs. I was close to saying, Lola, it's ok to look! We pumped on the hotel and on the conference itself. We had a great pumping experience, until we got to HKIA, Manila bound.
We pumped a combined 60 ounces of mik in those 36 hours. Whew! AND THE SECURITY OFFICERS WANTED US TO CHECK IN OUR BREASTMILK.
It's a good thing Jul had her laptop. We researched and found this document
Breastmilk is exempted from the 100ml liquid limit. This means that for any liquid exceeding the 100ml liquid limit, you have to check in that liquid. You can check the link for details.
For the love of me, I cannot imagine the temperature of that place where they check in the baggages! What's sad is that a mother who took an earlier flight checked in her breastmilk. =(
So how did we do it?
1) Jul's charms. She was explaining to the security officer about breastmilk, yadda yadda, yadda. And the security officer seems to be a guy who is still enjoying singledom. I, on the other hand, was ready to KILL. Heck, that milk that you are refusing came from my boobs!
2) When's Jul's charms seem to be wavering, we resorted to mimes. We showed the breastmilk. That got his attention.
3) We showed the link. We said that the document came from the Hongkong government. The officer mentioned that if the child is with us, we can handcarry the milk. If the child is not with us, then the milk needed to be checked in. We graciously The officer realized his mistake when we pointed out that we will not be bringing breastmilk in the first place when we have our kids with us as they will feed from us directly. With that argument, it was all systems go.
It pays to have two very persistent pumping mothers to protect that liquid gold.
