Library of Congress Opens Lactation Center

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Library of Congress Opens Lactation Center(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)To the cheers of dozens of workers – many of them working mothers – the Library of Congress opened the first of two planned lactation centers on March 9. The Center, located on the third floor of the Madison Building, is a former staff lounge newly renovated by the Architect of the Capitol and designed by the Library’s Facility Services. Calling the new Madison Lactation Center “an important addition to the support facilities available to working mothers at the Library of Congress,” AFSCME Local 2910 Chief Steward Nan Thompson Ernst noted that “Nursing mothers have struggled to find a good place to express breast milk at work resorting to health rooms, restrooms, offices, and conference rooms which are not necessarily private, sanitary or appropriately equipped for pumping and preparing food for infants and babies.” The Center provides a private, secure, and sanitary environment for nursing mothers and has four individually-locking pumping rooms. The Library’s unions contributed the photographs featuring mothers and babies that adorn the walls, contributing to making the Center “a calming place” where working mothers can provide the optimum nutrition for their babies after returning to work from maternity leave, said Lucy Suddreth, Director of Support Operations at the Library. - photo by Abby Brack Lewis

 

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