Breastfeeding moms at work find the law isn’t always enough
Stress, support create other complications
WASHINGTON — Crystal Early's son took to breast-feeding right away. At 10 weeks, James was already more than 13 pounds and "hungry all the time," Early said recently. But in just two weeks, she would be back at work and would need to pump breast milk.
"I'm nervous about the time it takes out of the day, and making sure I can take that time to really do what I need to do and also not miss important pieces of my job each day," Early said. "I never want someone to think that I'm taking a quote-unquote break, or that I'm missing out on work."
Early is one of the lucky ones: Her company, a Tampa, Florida, staffing firm where she's worked for six years, has a new pumping room with a door that locks, and has even decorated the space with photos of the babies whose mothers are pumping. Even so, she worries — about leaving her son when he's "still so little," about what she might miss while she's pumping and about how she'll pump when traveling for work.
"That is one of the number one sources of stress: how they are going to manage" the breast milk supply, said Aimee Danielson, director of the Women's Mental Health Program at Medstar Georgetown University Hospital. "One of the biggest factors in whether it's something tedious versus truly stressful is the ability of the workplace to have institutional support for pumping."
Earlier this year, The Washington Post's On Parenting section ran an article explaining what is required of companies that have workers who need to pump. In response, we received nearly 200 stories from federal employees, emergency workers, teachers and others at companies large and small. Some gushed about pristine pumping rooms, but many others had less pleasant tales.
In a country where there is no paid parental leave and where most leaves consist of just 12 weeks or less, women are returning to jobs when their bodies (and hearts) might be wanting them to do otherwise: They suffer from painful breasts, leaking milk, the stress of trying to balance a job with new family demands, plus a stigma that a mother can't excel at work.
We heard from new moms who pump as they sit on dirty floors in storage rooms and watch as roaches scurry in dark corners. We heard from teachers who pump during a short free period in their classrooms that don't lock, one with a video camera recording. And then there was this nightmare: "The CEO of the company used to announce when I was going to pump by singing a little song for everyone to hear: 'Pump, pump, pump it up!' "wrote a woman who worked in a Silicon Valley tech start-up. She also recalled a time when she wasn't permitted to leave a meeting and her milk began to leak through her shirt. (She quit and recently began her own consulting company.)
The workplace is full of obstacles for mothers, and pumping is a big one. Here, women share their stories.
So what does it take to pump breast milk? A room with a lock. And, of course, there's the pump, which typically costs about $300, although many pumps are now covered by insurance under the Affordable Care Act. New mothers also need sanitized bottles, storage bags, tubing and other accessories. Some very proactive employers provide a hospital-grade pump, and nursing moms bring their own equipment to hook up to it.
Women should have a space to set the equipment while pumping, a sink to clean the equipment, a refrigerator to keep the milk cold and a microwave, so the equipment can be sanitized after every pumping session, which usually lasts 15 to 20 minutes. (Add time for walking to the pumping space, storing the milk and cleaning the equipment.)
An employer, no matter its size, "has an obligation under the law to provide the space necessary to allow her to express milk in private and to have the time to do that," said Bob Simandl, a lawyer with von Briesen & Roper who focuses on employment and labor law. The area needs to have a locked door and no windows, or a covering over the windows. "The employer and employee need to have a very open discussion as to timing of breaks, whether they will coincide with paid breaks, expectations for where and when, and what is most convenient for employer and employee," Simandl said.
Sara McClusky of suburban Reston, Virginia, is a product analyst at a digital consulting company. The first person at her small firm to have a baby, she found there was no designated maternity leave or pumping space.
But McClusky, who has a 1-yearold daughter, was more fortunate than some. "I basically was told to come up with a wish list, and we'd walk through it and make a plan," she said. "I was fortunate that my boss at the time had been a working mother and had done the pumping thing. Before that, no one would have understood what I would be talking about."