IBM makes it easier for nursing moms with rooms, shipping service

What does IBM’s mothers’ room have that makes me so jealous?

Working breast-feeding mothers of Austin, get ready to be jealous.

Earlier this year, we visited one of two mothers’ rooms at IBM’s Austin offices and met with Carlie Bower, who is program director for cloud platform development. When she returned to work, Bower pumped breast milk for her son, Elian, who is now 1, as well asmilkshedonatedtoMothers’ Milk Bank of Austin. She plans to do the same for her daughter, who is due in July.

The Affordable Care Act requiresanycompanythatis covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act to provide a place, not just a bathroom, for new mothers to pump breast milk and the time to do it. The room had to be “shielded from view and free from intrusion from co-workers and the public and which may be used by an employee to express breast milk.” (We couldn’t find any references to breast-feeding in the proposed American Health Care Act.)

Before the act, we had mothers like myself pumping in nasty bathrooms, or makeshift spaces in conference rooms or closets. The room I pumped in after both of my pregnancies (13 and 16 years ago) was a single bathroom with a shower across from the photo department. I would stand in the hallway outside of the room waiting for the room to be free. When it finally was, it smelled, and then I got to hear my male co-workers pounding on the door while I pumped. They couldn’t understand why anyone would take that long to use abathroom.