BREASTFEEDING NOT ALWAYS WELCOME IN WORLD OF WORK

By Karen Brandon
Tribune staff reporter
March 20, 2001
To continue breastfeeding her daughter after she returned to work, Tulsa
computer analyst Connie Hedge pumped milk in airport bathrooms, in her
office cubicle behind a privacy curtain, and at the wheel of her car as she
careened along the tollways of Oklahoma.

"I think it's worth it," Hedges said of the odyssey coming to an end as her
daughter, Jacquelyn, approaches her 1st birthday. "I really think that
children were intended to drink mother's milk."

Aided by technology, breastfeeding is resurging in the U.S. Breast pumps
come disguised as briefcases and backpacks and can be plugged into cigarette
lighters. Though breastfeeding rates still are far beneath national health
goals, mothers are nursing their babies for longer periods of time at rates
unprecedented in the modern era.



Many obstacles

Despite breastfeeding's undisputed health benefits to infants, women who
choose to breastfeed and work encounter all manner of obstacles, among them
employers who won't let them take breaks to pump milk at regular intervals,
or who relegate women to bathroom stalls to pump milk; squeamishness over
breast milk; and distinctly American sexual and cultural mores that surface
on any matter involving bared breasts.

Legislation has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives to give
women the legal right to pump milk in the workplace, a protection available
in three states: Hawaii, Minnesota and Tennessee.

"People shouldn't be fired or discriminated against in the workplace for
expressing milk," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), sponsor of the
Breastfeeding Promotion Act.

The legislation also would give tax incentives to companies that provide
lactation services and to women who purchase or rent breast pumps, and would
set minimum federal safety standards for pumps.

"This is no longer being viewed as a lifestyle choice," said Elizabeth
Baldwin, legal adviser for the breastfeeding advocacy organization, La Leche
League. "We are looking at breastfeeding, finally, for what it is, a very
significant health choice for mother and baby."

Breastfeeding has been linked to numerous benefits for the health, growth
and development of infants, including fewer infections, diseases, and
possible increased cognitive development. Women who breastfeed also benefit.
They have reduced risks for ovarian and breast cancers, for instance.

In 1999, two-thirds of women breastfed their newborns in the hospital, the
highest rate since the figure was first recorded in 1965, according to the
Ross Products Division of Abbott Laboratories, the infant formula
manufacturer that has been the nation's primary source of breastfeeding
rates for decades. The figure drops to 31 percent at six months and 17
percent at one year, more than double the levels at those intervals a decade
earlier.

At the same time, more than half of the mothers with children younger than 1
work, a rate that has nearly doubled since the mid-1970s. In addition,
two-thirds of these working mothers are employed full-time, according to the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The experiences of women trying to negotiate work and breastfeeding vary
widely.



Job lost

Joney Lewis, a line worker at a factory in Danville, Ind., that makes power
steering parts, said she quit her job because her employer, Dana Corp.'s
Long Manufacturing Division, wouldn't give her a 20-minute break to pump
milk for her 5-month-old son, Timothy. "This is my first baby, and I'm so
excited that I breastfeed, and it's such a good thing, and they made me feel
horrible about it," she said.

Because she couldn't work out accommodations, she said, she was forced to
quit a job at the plant, where she had worked for two years. A supervisor
said she understood that a breastfeeding woman could wait eight hours
without pumping.

"I told her I would explode if I waited eight hours," Lewis said.

A spokeswoman said that the company tried to accommodate Lewis but that they
were unable to make arrangements.

By contrast, Kelly Rome, a product manager at CIGNA Corp. in Bloomfield,
Conn., pumps milk at least twice a day in a dedicated lactation room at her
office. The company pays for the breast pump and supplies, and provides
access to a lactation consultant 24 hours a day.



Daily routine

"I've got it down pretty much to a daily routine," Rome said, adding that
the support has made all the difference in her decision to continue to nurse
her son, who is 8 months old. "I couldn't imagine myself having to pump in
the bathroom."

The company has found that it saves $300,000 annually through the program
because the generally healthier babies have reduced pharmaceutical costs and
there is reduced absenteeism among mothers.

About one-third of the states, including Illinois, have legislation that
underscores a woman's right to breastfeed in public, and last year, Congress
passed another Maloney-sponsored bill, giving women the legal right to
breastfeed on federal property.

Previously, Maloney said, women breastfeeding babies had been escorted out
of the Capitol, national parks and the National Gallery of Art.

To breastfeed, a woman must either regularly feed the baby every few hours
or express the milk from her breasts. Otherwise, her milk-filled breasts
will be painful and at risk for infection.

Moreover, unless she continues regular pumping or nursing, milk production
will cease.

Sallie Page-Goertz, president of the International Lactation Consultant
Association, said two key hurdles that face women who want to breastfeed are
time and a place to pump.

"Those are huge hurdles," she said, especially for women in blue-collar or
low-wage service industry jobs.

Even at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., where
Page-Goertz works as a pediatric nurse practitioner, it took two years to
gain access to a closet where women could pump, she said.

"My bosses are very flexible. I can work at home. I can bring the baby to
work. I can pump at work," said Julie Campanini, a jury consultant who
travels frequently and is trying to nurse her son, now 12 weeks old, for a
year.

Still, she said, she finds it traumatic to pump in bathroom stalls in
airports and courthouses, where she is forever in search of an electric
outlet.

"It always feels like you're trying to hide it," she said.


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