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Community Corner

Breastfeeding Moms Need A Little Southern Comfort

Atlanta mother launches community campaign to establish lactation rooms in public places

It's hard to explain how incredible it is to solely provide your baby with nourishment, antibodies and comfort. It's also hard to explain how incredibly depressing being a milk factory can be. Breastfeeding makes some moms feel attached to their babies, while making others feel detached from reality.

Moms are often forced to make their choice between sanity and breastfeeding. However, too often that choice is taken away. Whether or not she wants to doesn't matter when, unlike the smoker, she has no where to do it.

Idaho, for example, doesn't protect a mother's right to nurse her child in public, while in Virginia, moms are only protected if breastfeeding on "any property owned, leased or controlled by the state."

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Three additional states only exempt breastfeeding from public indecency laws: Wyoming, South Dakota and Michigan. Every state except West Virginia, has some law related to breastfeeding but the laws are very different.

Puerto Rico requires shopping malls, airports, and government centers that serve the public to have accessible areas designed for the breastfeeding infants. Georgia is not so accommodating to the lactating.

Georgia law concedes that the breastfeeding is "an important and basic act of nurture which should be encouraged in the interests of maternal and child health." And the state has a mom's back if she is inclined to "breastfeed her baby in any location where the mother and baby are otherwise authorized to be."  However, you're not going to find any Georgia code that makes it comfortable.

Georgia moms can feed their babies on a park bench or in the bathroom if they want some privacy. They are not hauled off to the pokey for indecent exposure or fined for inappropriate behavior. Wow! Thanks, Georgia legislature. Maybe you would like to dine on your duck confit in a port-a-potty, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

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Breast-feeding moms don't have the same pull as smokers. There is just not enough money to be made by accommodating them.

Perhaps Sojourner Marable Grimmett of Fox 5 Atlanta’s My Atlanta Moms website and and her Married with Two Boys blog, can bring a little attention to the plight.

She has launched a lactation room support campaign, Table for Two, to bring awareness to the situation and establish lactation rooms. The initiative’s first goal is to establish lactation rooms at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Hartsfield-Jackson has designated rooms where you can satisfy a nicotine addiction. But, if you're looking for a decent place to nourish your child or do a little pumping, you are out of luck if you didn't call ahead for a private room.

Table for Two believes "it’s time to establish designated and convenient lactation rooms at Atlanta’s airport, as well as companies, and organizations across the country." It is a resource for anyone interested in building lactation rooms in their community and workplaces.

I was always looking for some reason not to breastfeed. I would take any excuse to lighten the guilt, something acceptable to say to disapproving attachment-parenting, natural, La Leche League, moms.

But truth be told, if public places had Vegas suites as lactating rooms, I still would've folded.

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