Workplaces going to be urged for private Breastfeeding areas

[HermyaAndThePomBears]

Here!

The government are going to give mothers the right to Brestfeed at work.

I don't know about anybody else, but I think this is great news.

Thats fine for you solo if thats how you feel, but plenty of people don't feel the same way, they should have the right to choose how they take their leave. Its still fine for the woman to take all the leave, its just that now the choice will be there.

"Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992
The Workplace Regulations require employers to provide suitable rest facilities for workers who are pregnant or breastfeeding. The facilities should be suitably located (e.g. near to toilets) and where necessary should provide appropriate facilities for the new or expectant mother to lie down."

From the HSE website - has been a legal requirement for 18 years. Don't you just love the Government - wish they would stop chopping resource from the end of BFing it's needed most (the first few weeks!)

Made me chuckle too. I have this vision of women in high heels and power suits, 4 weeks post birth, bringing their baby to work with them in a neat little black leather bag

What's the point of a breastfeeding room when the little milk monster is not there?

Toomany, in my job, no one understands. No one wants to. Women shouldn't have children in my job and that's a very popular opinion IME. One of the male comment was 'she shouldn't open her legs if she can't cope' meaning me and another single Mum in the workplace to do with child care when children ill etc...

Solo - same as that (well, it was 15 years ago, the industry is slightly more accomodating now).

Academia with health care workers - environment conducive to BF/expressing at work.

Engineering/military - for christ sake do not allude to having had a baby on pain of death.

Different industries will react in different ways to this.

i've read thread quickly and noticed a few were saying that there were issues at not being able to express because of all the rooms having glass doors etc

my building is all open plan apart from a few meeting rooms which all have glass walls/doors. I asked HR where i could express and they frosted the glass in one of the small meeting rooms for me. i appreciate that not all employers will be as good but just wanted to share my experience in case it helps others. before the glass was frosted i just used to wear a baggy top and stick my pump underneath. i only expressed in my lunchbreaks and i continued to bf DS til he was 19mths (only stopped then because i was pg and it hurt too much!)

Stealth I obviously haven't read the thread properly - I didn't know that they were going to reduce the mat leave to 6 months?

GetOrf, I think you had a similar experience of expressing as I did - 20 minutes to get one measly ounce. However, I had a friend who could get a whole feed in about 5 minutes no problem. And when DD3 was in SCBU and I used the hospital's electric pump, I managed to express enough to feed her.

Hammy, funny that, I went back for KIT days and bfed DD3 in meetings. Was promoted 2 months after I returned to work. Not taken seriously, hmm?

ISNT, I don't think they are, but they are giving fathers the choice/chance to take the other 6 months worth. I think I've got that bit right.

"I do feel strongly that I should be the one at home caring for my babies"

I am not criticizing at all, but I am interested in why you say that.

My husband, who made the choice actively to go part time to share our daughter?s care, does sometimes feel (although is an arrogant sod and dismisses it out of hand!) that there is a hierarchy of childcare, with Mother followed by father, followed by grandparents, followed by nanny, childminder, nursery. I can understand the arguments and research people bring forth about the use of outside care (we both wanted to avoid outside childcare and have no family to help) but a father is an equal parent and I can?t understand why a committed father is seen by some as ?second best??

When we passed the age of 15 months and she didn?t need to be attached to my breast quite so much the transition was easier than I thought. It helped that when she was born he cut his hours anyway so was around until midday for everyday of her life and was very attached.

He takes her to playgroups, park, zoo/science museum/aquarium every day. He is teaching her to read. He cooks with her, paints etc. He even wears her in a sling for every nap (she?s two) and co-sleeps with her when I?m on super earlies or a rare overnight.

He is also calmer than me and brings his different personality to the role of parent. It?s amazing to see.

I can?t see anything he can?t do that is less than ideal. I still breastfeed (she?s only just past 2 years) but not every single night and she doesn?t miss it as I cut out day feeding a while back.

Sorry, bit of a hijack. Guess I wonder why people necessarily think father's aren't as ideal as mothers.

I honestly have never heard of breastfeeding/expressing milk at work. Perhaps that is why my reaction was so strong. I've worked in a few different places including FTSE 100 large organisations but never come across it.

I work for a FTSE 100 company

"..think father's aren't"

Apologies for egregious Butcher's Apostrophe.

sorry ISNT, reducing the ML to 6 months and increasing PL accordingly

Maybe it's to do with the fact that I haven't had your kind of relationship otch. Ds's father buggered off when I was pg and Dd's father didn't/wouldn't live with me (I now know why!!!) and so it was all down to me anyway. I was/am Mum and Dad in many ways.

It could also be the way I was brought up. Old fashioned line of thinking. Dad was the bread winner when we were very young and Mum was the cook/housekeeper throughout. In my defence and that of my parents; I am nearly 47 , so times have moved along since then.

I'm still bfing Dd and she's nearly 4. It wont last much longer now, I'm very aware of that, but I personally (only my own feelings and opinions) think that bfing would have ended a long time ago if a man was on the scene. Dd's father thought she should've been put on formula at 6 months old .
I have a friend whose husband was made redundant when their first born was tiny so she went back to work, he cared for their Ds, but bfing stopped immediately which it may not have if she'd stayed at home longer with Ds.

Hope that answers your question otch :)

'OK seriously now, what jobs do people do where they are actually able to take a lunch hour where they can be unavailable to take phone calls / check things or even off site?

Well, when I had ds1 I was a receptionist; not everyone is high flying!. We used to have to turn the switchboard off for an hour.

And the job afterwards (well, two further along in fact) I was working in aprent support; tbh I could have easily fed at meetings / expressed and it would not have been an issue at all. Given the BF support people were downstairs I;d probably have been quite a star.

In fact BF didn't work with those children as they had milk intolerances and I was a student when the younger ones arrived, but it would have been feasible.

it' surely up to the woman to weigh up what she does for a living, what breaks are available etc?

Another example would be someone on flexi- get there a bit earlier or stay a bit later and take a break. It doesn't have to be the employer's loss.

But as ISNT said, it's old news anyway.

Breaks are allowed for expressing. I think that's the law isn't it?

It does solo, thanks, and good for you!

I am lucky in this regard. I haven't been lucky always in my life but am grateful to be able to arrange this set up.

isn't it the eternal problem with "legislating" for things... yes, I worked for a firm with a very nice HR lady who was obviously very hurt I wasn't going to express at work, she had the whole thing all planned out, bless her!

Not all workplaces will be so enlightened, not all workplaces will find it very easy. If you work in a 3 person company, one person going on maternity leave is going to be difficult, stands to reason. No use sternly wagging your finger and saying "but it's the law". Equally a small company, or a very full-on job, is going to need some help/interpretation/negotiation.

It is good to see bfing being more and more "normalised" though. It's not all about the wimmin either - DP is very pro himself, would certainly do all he could to help and would see it as part of life, and there are plenty of men like him. The more education the better, as ever.

ClimberChick

I'm not saying you are going to sit there with an electric pump reading a mag and having a cuppa, but it's extra time off work others will not get, they will see you swanning off and it will create resentment.

And the work will not like it, thats you being unproductive fro X amount of mins extra a day over the all ready unproductive lunch and fag breaks, it will make people less likely to employ women and more likely to sack mothers on trumpt up charges/excuses.

Ryoko - Women are protected against being sacked on trumped up charges, happily. This would include being sacked as a result of taking legally-permitted breaks to express breastmilk. Just as they are protected against being sacked for becoming pregnant.

And for everyone else who sees problems,clearly, some workplaces will adapt more easily to supporting this than others. Just as clearly, actually breastfeeding a baby in the office/at a meeting/with clients/on the phones or whatever will not always be appropriate - just as eating your own lunch is not always appropriate in every work situation. That's ok - open-minded people can tolerate that and understand that sometimes, they might have to go somewhere else.

Bringing a baby older than a tiny newborn into work is going to be difficult for many workplaces, too, and not all that much fun for the baby, either - that's ok, lets work on making maternity leave and flexi-time better suited to individual needs.

What I don't understand is the sneering tone of resentment. People have biological and physiological needs, and the breastfeeding mother's biological and physiological need is to express milk (quite apart from the benefits to her baby, which as a society and culture we should support, anyway). People are at work 8 hours a day,and their needs can't always be turned on and off like a tap - the diabetic needs insulin, the person with IBS needs to use the loo (well, we all do that), the menstruating woman needs a bit more time in the loo one week in four, the heavily-pregnant may need to have her feet up 'cos of swelling...and so on. Obv, bf is more than biology and physiology, but just as we accept different individual needs and enable them to be met, why would a bf woman's needs be any different?

It's not going to last for ever anyway - unlike some needs.

Sheesh.

But Ryoko thats the point - people do need breaks, people take fag breaks that don't benefit anyone - but thats just a fact of life. Not for all companies I know, but most. Some people get fag breaks, some get expressing breaks.

tiktok- exactly. You've put that so much more eloquently than I ever could.

tiktok you would have to prove it, how you gonna prove it, unless you have records and get really down and dirty about that little git over there who never does his work, I can prove it where as I did more then enough of my work. and my attitude/team working was no different to anyone else. what are you going to do?.

It's pretty obvious they are not going to sack you citing taking long breaks, it's going to be "not a team player" "productivity dropped" etc.

My work gave me a warning letter over my menstruating, I was taking time off every time because I got faint when I stand up and blackout, GPs didn't help and just kept saying everyones different, nothing we can do shit happens, so work gave me a written warning, thankfully my time of the month has been fine since I had my son, hopefully it doesn't go back to normal when I start work again if they let me back in.

OK, ryoko, you think that some employers are going to take advantage of the fact that some mothers will use their legal right to express/bf in order to sack some women. This is, of course, possible .

And so, as a result, your response is to cave in to this, and to argue against women being permitted to have expressing/bf concessions. Because a few employers may use it as a reason to sack people and it would be difficult to prove otherwise.

I am so glad people like you did not win when women were arguing for maternity leave, or paternity leave for that matter.

Sorry to hear about your periods problem - this would have been an easy point to gain protection over if you had a union or professional organisation to fight for you, and you could even have argued it as an individual, starting with changing your GP.