Status Updates From Screaming on the Inside: Th...

The pandemic destabilized our already ramshackle structures of childcare. Although relief funding from the Paycheck Protection Program was able to keep a good chunk of centers from closing during the early days of the COVID-19 crisis, 80 percent of child-care centers are experiencing staffing shortages, a third have longer waitlists than pre-pandemic, and about a quarter have reduced their operating hours.

I was spending what felt like half my waking hours sitting in a rocking chair, attached to the pump. I would get up to change her and feed her the bottle, put her back down, and then sit in that rocking chair listening to the radio with the flanges hanging off my breasts, long enough to bleed through my pad onto the cream colored fabric, which I then tried to scrub in the pitch-dark room.