I want to commend Marsha on a great response to the irritating Boston 
Globe article.  I am posting it for those of you who didn't get to see 
it before it was removed from the site.

 

Jane Swift is under attack for many reasons:  She's young and has made some 
serious political blunders, she's just been handed the 
governorship and has very little experience, she'll deliver twins shortly, 
she lives a 3 1/2 hour drive away from the State House and goes home only every 
other day, and she has a stay at home husband with a toddler in day 
care.  Some believe she doesn't have what it takes to be either a 
decent governor or an involved mother.  I believe she won't 
discuss her future feeding plans as she fears it will only bring on more 
criticism.  While we might agree that it was great to have her set up 
lactation rooms, it was terrible timing, as it was one of the first things she 
did, even before she was sworn in.  Not a smart political move when people 
were just waiting to attack her for most anything.

 


The breast-feeding brigade 

In the State House and beyond, lactation goes public 

By Joanna Weiss, Globe Staff, 4/18/2001 

 

It's the Revenge of the 

Breast-feeding Women! 

 

That's how the uninitiated must feel here in Lactation Nation. Consider: 
The official State House lactation room is set to open this week. A group of 
Uxbridge women just fought for the right to breast-feed at a town meeting. 
Congress is mulling a comprehensive bill on breast-feeding rights. Next month's 
Town and Country magazine has a column on breast-feeding etiquette. (If you see 
people squirming, it says, ''try to face the other way.'') 

 

With Acting Governor Jane Swift expecting twins, this year's St. Patrick's 
Day political breakfast was, unsurprisingly, full of sucking jokes. And while 
some talk show hosts have scoffed, the movement shows no sign of fading. Women, 
you might say, are supporting their breasts. 

 

''You have to decide,'' says social worker Sarah Miller, 21, who is 
breast-feeding her 21-month-old. ''Are you going to be really uncomfortable 
about it, or are you going to be like, `This is what I do'?'' 

 

For years, breast-feeding advocates have been fighting for the latter. They 
want us to feel comfortable saying ''nipple.'' To be at one with the breast 
pump. 

 

La Leche League is a breast-feeding support group founded in the 1950s. 
League leaders acknowledge their radical reputation, fueled by the fact that 
they encourage breast-feeding of toddlers. But they insist they just want to 
make nursing the cultural norm - welcome, even expected, in public. 

 

Some women have already internalized the message. ''I've nursed 
everywhere,'' says Susan Scheele, 31, a Jamaica Plain mother of three. ''In the 
grocery store, on the T, at the park, on the street, waiting for the bus. 
Anyplace you'd be, I've probably nursed.'' 

 

But she's in the minority. In 1998, federal figures show, only 29 percent 
of American women were nursing when their children were 6 months old. And many 
women who breast-feed complain that they're hardly encouraged. 

 

When Scheele's sister recently tried to breast-feed at New York's Whitney 
Museum - on a bench outside a sexually explicit art exhibit - a museum guard 
told her, ''You can't do that here.'' A 19-year-old client once told Miller she 
was worried she'd get arrested for breast-feeding in public. 

 

And US Representative Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, has collected 
thousands of complaints, from women ridiculed with mooing noises, asked to leave 
federal parks and museums on the grounds that no food or drink is allowed, or 


told that breast-feeding could attract bees. 

 

In part, breast-feeding advocates say, we can blame this discomfort on 
''Baywatch.'' Or Hugh Hefner. Or Marilyn Monroe. At some point, our culture 
decided that breasts equal sex, and it's hard to get people to shake that 
thought. Lactation counselors tell stories of women declaring, ''My breasts 
belong to my husband.'' 

 

But the breast, La Leche League leaders want to remind us, has an alternate 
use. They reel off lists of breast-feeding's medical benefits and point out that 
the American Pediatric Association recommends that women nurse for a year. The 


group holds monthly meetings where women can get advice and support. 

 

''We'll talk about nipples and breasts and areolas and many things. And 
poopy diapers,'' says Janna Frelich, a league counselor. ''If you're going to 
have a baby, that's no time to be squeamish, because there'll be all kinds of 
body fluids.'' 

 

And you can't be afraid of the pump. True, one manufacturer calls its $250 
product ''Pump In Style'' and disguises it in ''designer-look'' backpacks and 
satchels But there's no disguising what's inside: the motor that creates a 
vacuum, or the hard plastic receptors that look like suction cups. 

 

Sarah Miller admits that the whole process is ''a little weird,'' and that 
sometimes, you ''feel like a cow.'' Still, you do what you have to, she says. 
When her baby was small, she pumped at work, several times a day, in a 
supervisor's office. It took ''15 minutes, max, start to finish,'' she says. ''I 
got good.'' 

 

Alas, that's more than many people want to know, which is part of the 
reason Maloney thinks federal intervention is in order. Last year, she 
championed a measure that made breast-feeding legal on federal property. This 
year, she's 

pushing a bill that would bar workplace discrimination against 
breast-feeding, encourage businesses to set up lactation rooms, and require 
breast pumps to be regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. 

 

Massachusetts has no such laws, though a bill awaiting action would 
reaffirm that breast-feeding is allowed in public. Its cosponsor, Representative 
Ellen Story (D-Amherst), said women need protection from ''overzealous authority 
figures who think that it's improper for a mother to feed her baby in a public 
place.'' 

 

No, breast-feeding is perfectly legal in the State House, happily for Jane 
Swift. So far, she has stayed mum about her own baby-feeding plans. ''That is 
not,'' spokeswoman Shawn Feddeman says, ''a question she's going to answer.'' 
But Swift has authorized two ''New Mothers' Rooms,'' lactation safe harbors in 
the State House and a nearby state office building, at a renovation cost of less 
than $1,000. 

 

The private sector, too, has discovered the benefits of safe lactation 
zones. State Street Investments now requires lactation rooms in all of its new 
or newly renovated buildings; one Quincy room is equipped with a gliding rocker 
and a basketful of breast-feeding pamphlets. 

 

''It helps retention,'' says Margarete Dupere, the company's senior vice 
president. ''It's easy to come back to work and do what I need to do for my 
family.'' 

 

But many workplaces still don't offer a special place to pump. That means 
some women resort to parked cars; Hilary Black, a La Leche League leader and 
professional lactation consultant, sells cigarette lighter adaptors at $16 
apiece. And many women resort to ladies' rooms, too. 

 

But while having a lactation room is part of the battle, Black says, it's 
lso about expectations. ''I like my children knowing that breasts are for 
breast-feeding.'' 

 

This story ran on page C1 of the Boston Globe on 4/18/2001. 

 

© Copyright  2001 Globe Newspaper Company.   



 

--- Marilyn Farland, IBCLC

--- [log in to unmask] 

--- EarthLink: It's your Internet.

             ***********************************************
The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM)
mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html