The patients are their responsibility, visitors are not.
Here's the problem though - a breastfeeding mother of a baby in hospital is not a visitor as visitors can come and go.
She is not part of the staff as staff get breaks and a finish time.
But she is working 24-7.
She's nappy changer, bouncer, cuddler, jiggler, entertainer, singer, storyteller, bather.
She's forehead stroker and wannabe distractor of attention through upsetting, painful and invasive procedures.
She's advocate and decision maker, liaising with doctors, consenting to treatments, making difficult choices.
She's security guard - protecting her baby on a ward full of people with lots of comings and goings.
She's preventer of infection, sterilising pumping equipment and dummies, trying to watch that everyone who comes near the baby is washing hands, using alcohol gel.
And on top of all this her body is providing all the nutrition - as such she'll be trying to feed the baby as often as possible as sick babies need as much hydration and calories as you can get into them.
She'll very likely be stuck in a relentless cycle of pumping to allow either bottle or tube feeding as breastfeeding is not always considered adequate as the babies intake needs to be closely monitored. She'll also trying to breastfeed the baby in between pumps for comfort and reassurance and in an effort to stop the baby from forgetting how to feed from the breast. If the baby will take from a bottle rather than a feeding tube she'll also be heating and preparing bottles of milk for each feed.
This last part - the feeding pumping feeding pumping cycle is relentless + massively time consuming, it's crucial to the baby's recovery and it needs to fit in between all the other stuff. Her ability to produce milk will be affected by stress, exhaustion and bad nutrition.
Yet self care - eating, sleeping, washing naturally takes second place to the child's needs. There is just not time or opportunity to go out and forage for food whilst performing all these other roles.