I ask the readers who are working mothers in breastfeeding and I ask, with it, not only to encourage you to tell us your experiences, but also to help improve the reception and treatment they receive in their workplaces. My question is this: Do you take out the milk in the toilet?
Spanish legislation theoretically protects the breastfeeding of working mothers by providing a legal environment in which to develop it until the baby's nine months. However, the reality is very different.
There are many things that fail and not always allowed make breastfeeding and work compatible for many reasons, from pressure not to take leave hours, resistance to changing incompatible hours and positions, to difficulties not contemplated by law to maintain breastfeeding properly.
I want to highlight the impossibility of many women to milk out at work, something that, if you have a nursing child, you need to do several times during the day and in a suitable place.
I was forced, given the refusal to lend me an office, to take out the milk sitting in the office toilet, which was certainly not the most appropriate. The dirtiness of the surroundings was already a serious problem, although I was able to cope with it very carefully, but it was also against me, even using my legal permission hours, the lack of time with tranquility and privacy.
Some time ago I told you a very impressive initiative carried out in Argentina, designed to raise awareness among the authorities about this problem. The deputies of the Palace of the Legislature of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires found chocolates on their tables with an explanation: One of these chocolates was wrapped in a public toilet. Which one would you eat?
While there is no a law that requires companies to provide a suitable place to extract milk the abandonment of breastfeeding by incorporation into work will continue to be many, as it becomes very difficult to maintain the necessary production and collection of milk to feed the infant, which, without a doubt, should be, as a minor, the most protected by any legal measure .
Babies, as clearly indicated by the O.M.S and the Spanish Pediatric Association, should be able to have access to the best possible feeding. It is a right that no one should deny them.
The additional circumstances that may influence each case, which prevent or hinder breastfeeding, or make a mother decide not to breastfeed, cannot change that fundamental fact: for babies the best milk is that of their mother and it is convenient offer it exclusively until six months and then at least two years.
The demands of the market and jobs should always be adapted to this best interest, which is not deny children that right to have access to the best possible food. That later, this, for other circumstances is not possible should not modify the legislation that does not hinder this or make it impossible directly.
Therefore, in addition to maintaining measures that provide priority protection to nursing mothers, it also offers them adequate spaces to maintain breastfeeding.
I will also comment on the issue that women are the ones who only enjoy breastfeeding leave and my opinion about it, but what I want to refer to is the need to provide lactars in companies to be can either feed the baby or extract and store breast milk.
You, surely, if you want breastfeed and work You may encounter many problems. There are jobs that, due to their schedule, turnicity or exposure to contaminating substances, are already a real torture for nursing mothers. But, in addition, if the work environment is reluctant to help these women, who are not given even a clean and quiet space to do the extraction, they can force us to totally or partially wean without wishing to do so.
As I tell you, my experience was disastrous. Taking out the milk in the toilet, storing it in the fridge with the food of others, was only part of the difficulties. The most complicated was, without a doubt, the pressure of the environment, the negative comments and even the teasing of the companions themselves.
Many of you and also, I do not doubt it, the parents, you are going to encounter this situation: want that your child continues to enjoy breast milk even if the woman joins work once finished the low. Other of our readers will be going through it or have experiences that can help us.
Therefore I propose that we share the experience based on this question: Do you take out the milk in the toilet?
