Communities answer call for more public spaces to breastfeed

Moms in the Antigonish, N.S., area will soon have a dedicated public space to feed their babies as the community prepares to launch its first family-friendly breastfeeding room at the Antigonish Market Square.

The room, which is expected to open by mid-December, is a project of Building a Breastfeeding Environment (BaBE), a non-profit community group that recently asked moms who breastfeed about the barriers they face. 

The No. 1 answer was the lack of family-friendly areas where they could go when they're away from home. 

"So many people were talking about breastfeeding in cars, you know, breastfeeding away from family members, breastfeeding away from their friends," said Sionnach Lukeman, the group's president and an assistant professor at St. Francis Xavier University. 

"I think Antigonish has a lot of spaces that support breastfeeding," she said, "but what people really wanted was a room that you could close the door on and sort of feel safe."

Designed for families

The 10-by-28-foot space, dubbed the Nurture Nook, will have a kids play area, bathroom, a change table and a private pumping station. 

For Ellen Lukeman, a public health nurse and member of BaBE's board, it's an important addition to the already welcoming community of Antigonish. She breastfeeds her two-month-old daughter, which can sometimes be a challenge because she also has a toddler.

"Two year olds have a tendency to want to bolt on you as soon as you sit down," she said.

And Antigonish isn't the only Nova Scotia community to answer the call.

A nursing lounge was built on the third level of Dartmouth's Mic Mac Mall in 2014, not long after a store employee asked a mom who was breastfeeding to leave, which prompted a "nurse-in" protest.

Mall spokesperson Rebecca Logan said since the room was built, it's been used nearly every day. 

"We had so many positive responses that it was almost overwhelming," she said. 

Halifax Shopping Centre built a dedicated breastfeeding space of its own in May 2016 at the request of customers. It's part of the mall's redesigned food court.

There's also a similar room at Sunnyside Mall in Bedford.

Normalizing breastfeeding

Nancy Harmon, a lactation consultant in the Halifax area, expects more spaces designed with breastfeeding moms in mind to pop up. 

She said she's already seen more of these spaces on university campuses, for instance, thanks in part to the introduction of midwives in Nova Scotia and the fact the province acknowledged breastfeeding was a human right in 2000.

We never want the message to go out that people must breastfeed in these designated areas.- Nancy Harmon, lactation consultant 

"Several years ago you hardly could mention breastfeeding, but now it's an open topic," said Harmon. 

But while she supports the idea of a separate area to breastfeed, she also doesn't want anyone to get the wrong idea. 

"We never want the message to go out that people must breastfeed in these designated areas," she said.

That's what Sionnach Lukeman was worried about when her group started talking about designing the room. 

"Should we put people in a room?" she asked. "By not exposing people to breastfeeding are we actually part of the problem?"

Lukeman said she realized that the space helps with "the logistics of parenting," but doesn't take away from the group's mission of promoting breastfeeding in public.

"People should feel comfortable breastfeeding anytime, anywhere," she said.