With a loud hum of computer servers surrounding her, my mother spent days shivering in a cold room, huddled over her breast pump on an old wooden stool. She blocked off one of the aisles of server racks with scotch tape from her desk and a printer paper sign that read “Pumping in Progress,” hoping it would prevent being accidentally exposed to her coworkers—most of whom were male and cringed at the thought of breastfeeding. As a cryptologic technician for the U.S. Navy from 1984-2004, this was her only place of privacy that wasn’t a bathroom stall. Her hands were cramped from the manual pump and the chill in the air. The bobby pins keeping her bun in place were digging into the side of her head as she struggled to make even a drop of breastmilk—also known as liquid gold—for her newborn.