San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
AF aiming to make nursing mothers’ lives less stressful
Master Sgt. Meagan Roberts remembers how it was trying to pumpbreast milk forher first baby as a Security Forces cop on an Air Force base in Missouri.
That was eight years ago, but it might as well have been the Stone Age.
In those days, she would scrounge for a private space. Sometimes it was a closet or an office. Other times, it was a Lenco BearCat, an armored personnel carrier.
Armed with supplies she brought from home, Roberts pumped asmuch as she could, for as long as she could, but it wasn’t easy because she wasn’t the only Security Forces airman on duty and had a job to do.
Recognizing the need for liberalizing the rules and finding ways of keeping women in uniform as they return to work after childbirth, the Air Force has instituted a workplace makeover for women who are back on duty and nursing their babies.
The policy, established last year and updated six months ago, gives airmen more flexibility with lactation breaks and mandates private roomswith access to a refrigerator so mothers can store their milk.
Commanders are required to provide nursing mothers with dedicated space close to where they work so they can pump breast milk in privacy. Lactation room refrigerators, used strictly for breastmilk, allowthem to store it.
But the Air Force has gone further, buying “lactation pods” and reserving them for military and civilian moms. Some of them are mobile, like three that arrived last month at Luke AFB in Glendale, Ariz.
The pods are private rooms equippedwith the resourcesneeded for women to breastfeed and pump breast milk and are part of an effort to make the Air Force more welcoming to women. They
can be used inside buildings or outdoors.
The pods and rooms mark a big shift in Air Force culture.
“We’ve got to take care of all of our airmen, and nursing mothers are no exception,” said Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, commander of the Air Force Recruiting Service in San Antonio. “We have adapted our culture and our facilities to accommodate nursing mothers so they don’t feel torn between the mission and their family. It’s just the right thing to do.”
A 2017 survey at Luke uncovered a need for lactation rooms, complete with locked doors. The base opened them last year in a child care center, a pediatric clinic and three other buildings.
Still, the rooms had limitations — the biggest of which was limited hours — that prompted the use of lactation pods.
The changes in Air Force policy were championed by the Women’s Initiative Team, a group of 700 or so volunteers that studies barriers military and civilian women face in the service.
Since the policy was implemented, lactation pods have popped up at bases nationwide. The portable mini-rooms cost $20,000 andare the shape andsize of a small teardrop RV.
“The lactation pods are very sterile,” said Sharon Kozak, executive director of the 56th FighterWing Community Action Team at Luke. “All you need is to just plug them in, and they’re mobile. It’s not like a room over in the corner. It’s an actual pod.”
For veterans like Roberts, 34, who has been in the Air Force 12 years and is now at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, and Senior Airman Caitlin Diaz-Gorsi, a firsttime mother, the policy makeover has been a godsend.
Diaz-Gorsi, now in uniform for 4½ years, returned to Luke from maternity leave Sept. 14 unaware that there had been a change in Air Force policy. Perhaps the biggest difference between the old and newrules was the time mothers have to pump breast milk. Where they once had 15 to 20 minutes every four hours, it’s now unlimited.
“I would say on average an entire session for most mothers takes approximately 30 minutes to an hour. I think it really varies. I pump an entire 30 minutes. Some moms only pump for about 10 to 15 minutes,” said DiazGorsi, 25, of Buckeye, Ariz.
“It’s been a great relief being able to come to work and have a dedicated space to be able topumpin private and not be interrupted,” said Roberts, who works at the Air Force Recruiting Service on Randolph.
The recruiting service created a permanent lactation room, designed by a pair of nursing mothers, even before the policy was signed. Since then, three nursing mothers, all of them active-duty airmen, used the room.
There are 3,096 activeduty, Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard recruiters in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Germany, Italy and Japan, with roughly 1 in every 5 a woman.
“The nearly 1,000 recruiting storefronts across the United States are not equipped with stand-alone lactation rooms,” said Col. Sean McKenna, the recruiting service’s chief of plans and resources. “It’s logistically and practically impossible, given the tight spaces at each of the many leased locations.”
Despite that, he added, the recruiting service will create a private, clean and lockable temperature-controlled area for nursing mothers where they work.
The latest changes in policy, outlined in an Air Force guidance memorandum signed Aug. 15, detail responsibilities and procedures to better enable commanders to mesh mission
have requirements with the needs of nursing mothers, which include cleanliness and privacy.
That’s a giant improvement over how Roberts nursed at Whiteman AFB in Missouri after the birth of her son, Lane, now 8. Fellow Security Forces cops would give her time to pump milk in the Bearcat. She also found opportunities to pump elsewhere, but it still wasn’t optimal.
“I didn’t nurse very long in Security Forces because of all theextra effort youhad to put in to bringing all of your stuff,” Roberts said.
Roberts has seen the evolution of nursing in the Air Force while having Lane, 8; Lincoln, 4; and now Nova, 7 months, over the course of her career. Things aredifferent now. Better.
“Talk about the quality of life, becausewe can come to work andwe’re not stressed out about how we’re going to be able to take care of our kids,” she said.