Breast-feeding moms get a break

The luckiest ones get private rooms with comfy chairs, electrical outlets and access to free breast pumps, among other things.

Other working mothers in Nebraska who want to nurse their babies and must therefore pump breast milk have done so in supply closets, bathroom stalls or even their cars.

Nebraska and Iowa do not recognize a mother's right to pump in the workplace. The only Nebraska law governing breast-feeding is an allowance for nursing mothers to get out of jury duty. An effort in Iowa to legislate workplace protections for nursing mothers fizzled last month.

But a lesser-known provision of the new federal health care overhaul largely makes that moot.

The law, which will amend the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, requires employers of 50 or more to offer nursing mothers time and a place to express breast milk. It doesn't have to be paid time, and it covers only one year. The law says employers must offer a private (not permanent) spot that is not a bathroom.

This provision, while a potential hassle for employers, is widely viewed as a victory for breast-feeding advocates, who tout the benefits of the practice and say workplace protections will encourage more women to do it.

Experts long have said that breast milk bolsters a baby's immune system, can help stave off disease and obesity, is nutritious, and is relatively free (formula can run up to $2,700 per infant in a year), although nursing mothers need to take in more calories.

Dr. Laura Wilwerding, an Omaha-area pediatrician, clinical associate professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and advocate of breast-feeding, said legislating such protections will go a long way toward increasing the rate of mothers who breast-feed.

Wilwerding has long encouraged the Nebraska Legislature to pass a basic breast-feeding rights bill. In 2009, such a bill didn't make it out of committee.

In advocating such a law, Wilwerding said, she has encountered no business opposition just a sense from some that “there will be breasts flailing everywhere ... (and) babies will be everywhere.”

The Nebraska Chamber of Commerce was unaware of this provision in the health care law, said spokesman Jamie Karl.

That is, he said, “what happens when you rush through a 2,000-page bill.”

Karl said the government's requirement that the provision apply to a business of 50 or more employees was arbitrary, saying: “It's just as much a burden on the employer with 50 as an employer with 49.”

And, he said, there are so many larger matters for employers in the health care bill that the provision on breast-feeding is “very low on the totem pole.”

The American Association of Pediatrics recommends that mothers exclusively breast-feed for six months and combine breast milk with soft foods until babies are a year old.

Yet breast-feeding rates fall off a cliff by the time an infant turns 3 months old. Not coincidentally, that's when working mothers run out of time off under the Family Medical Leave Act.

Some women in lower-paying, service-oriented positions either don't ask for the time to pump or are denied it, said Diane Rosenthal, coordinator of the Women, Infants and Children supplemental nutrition program at the Charles Drew Health Center near North 30th and Grant Streets.

“I think a lot of them stop before they decide to go back to work because they don't want to fool with it,” she said.

Physiologically, breast-feeding is a supply-and-demand system. To keep her milk coming in, a working mother who cannot feed her baby on site has to pump.

And while mothers can nurse babies discreetly, there is nothing discreet about a whirring, wheezing electric breast pump with plastic cones and tubing. A manual pump is less noisy but takes a lot longer.

The new law doesn't appear to affect some of Omaha's largest employers. Years ago, they created lactation programs to support nursing mothers.

First National Bank of Omaha has had one since 1994. Some 40 employees and their spouses, if they wish are currently using the bank's services: lactation rooms with a fridge and glider chair, lactation consultant, discount on nursing products and $50 off the Medela Pump In Style, which currently retails at Target for about $280.

At ConAgra Foods, employees can reserve private lactation rooms via the computer. The company pays for the first six months of breast-pump rental and provides access to a lactation consultant and a 24-hour nurse line.

The setup has enabled Jessica Jones to keep breast-feeding her 7-month-old son.

“I was blown away at how easy they made it for me,” said Jones, who works a three-day-a-week schedule in the company's organizational development department. “A lactation consultant showed up in my room with a hospital-grade pump and showed me how to use it. I didn't have to fill out stacks of paperwork or go across town.”

ConAgra spokeswoman Melissa Baron said the company wants to ease the transition back to work for new mothers.

That support, Jones said, made her want to work harder.

At least three area hospitals Creighton University Medical Center, the Nebraska Medical Center and Methodist Hospital provide lactation rooms.

That's a plus for nurse Jackie Preheim, although her job prevents her from taking full advantage of support services.

As an organ recovery coordinator at the Nebraska Medical Center, Preheim has had to pump in hospitals across the country while fetching organs for the medical center's transplant program.

“I've been on numerous trips and have to go sit in a toilet stall because hospitals big or small don't have the facilities we do at the med center,” she said.

Greg Cutchall, whose restaurant franchise company employs 1,800 full- and part-time people in 43 restaurants, said the federal mandate to accommodate nursing mothers doesn't appear to be a hardship on businesses. He noted that Cutchall Management already has dealt with employees needing to express milk. He said he's far more worried about the potential for higher health care premiums.

Preheim said permission to pump was crucial to remaining in a job she loves.

“Would I be working?” she asked, considering the alternative. “Probably not. It makes a huge, huge difference.”

Contact the writer:

444-1136, erin.grace@owh.com

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