Support for Breastfeeding

Saw one of my friends post an article about support for breastfeeding on Facebook, ironically a couple hours after I had this same conversation with another friend over lunch. I'm about to go through the breastfeeding adventure for the second time with my daughter who will arrive sometime in April. The first time was not easy. Actually it was extremely difficult and stressful for me. Going back to a workplace that was not "pumping-friendly" made it that much harder for me.

I was a first-time mom, with no friends or family with children at the time to lean on for advice, and I had the stress of knowing that my daughter's health and happiness solely depended on my ability to feed her. I was given a small room to pump in that backed up to my coworkers cubicles. Do you know how loud those pumps are? Very loud. And probably louder when your stressed about other people hearing it and knowing what your doing. The room had a large window which they just put a piece of copier paper over to cover it. I had to hide around the doorway for fear that people would see me. The door had a lock, but several HR, sales reps and managers had keys to the room. Many times, people would try to come into the room, only stopping once they heard me yell that I was in there. People would lock the room when I wasn't in there, which then sent me on a chase around the building searching for someone who had a key to let me in the room.

So my point? For those employers who think that nursing/pumping moms are taking valuable time away from work, hurting the productivity of yourself and others around you... maybe you should consider this. If you made it easier and less stressful for us to pump, we'd be spending less time searching for a place to pump and less time worrying about how we will be able to pump enough to feed our child for the next day.

I don't think the argument is between what's better, breast or bottle. I think it's that women should be supported no matter which method they choose. They should be supported at home, at work and in public.

Check out this article from the NY Times.