17 Jul 2008

The story of a lactation room...

I’ve been exclusively breastfed Lya for the last 6 months and now that she has started her solids I found out my milk supply started to decreased. Plus.. I have to face difficulties every time I sneaked in the vacant GM room to do my pumping session which is twice daily…. There was once, I even stucked there for about ½ hour after finished expressing my milk just because one of the managers in the next department was discussing something outside the room with his staffs. I wouldn’t dare to leave the room in front of them, or I will end up have to answer questions like what was I doin in that room, or at least I have to swallow weird looking stares from them (which I already used to..). That empty room shouldn’t be occupied, any way….Again, I have to play hide and seek using the pantry, to wash my pumping equipment, since I DO NOT like to clean everything in the toilet..! Don’t think that’s appropriate to wash equipment for preparing my baby’s food.

Now… Alhamdulillah, my effort to set up a lactation room in M*SC has been approved by the big boss of HR and this mini project has started…. (yeay…!) The properties department has begun to get the quotations from the contractors for this job… Last Monday, I’ve been called by properties dept to discuss on the layout for this room, and there I was, discussing the matter with 3 guys… who apparently know nothing on this, if I don’t feed the info to them.

Well, that’s not the issue anyway… even most of the nursing mothers here in the company have very lil info on the “existence” of lactation room at workplace… Anyways… I was disappointed to see the layout….. the room is too small, with only one station, and they are planning to take whatever “stock” they have for the room.. e.g. table (which are used for caterings…!), chairs, etc… just to save budget... Can u imagine how disappointed I was…

I’ve informed them minimum requirement for the lactation rooms, but they didn’t even bother to look at it ( I think!). then I requested to extend the room, just to make it bigger, to fit at least 2 stations with curtains/partitions between the stations.. I was soooo pissed off when one of the guys there said while laughing, “ Why do you need such big room… why do you need partitions, anyway… what is there to be embarrassed of…. The persons who are “doing” it are all women anyway…what’s wrong “doin” it together??” Is it tooo difficult to have just curtains? He has no respect for women at all… sakitnye hati kuu… the way he’s discussing this matter like, he’s making a joke out of it… which was tak kelakar langsung…

I was about to bergaduh2 with him… questioning is it becoz of the budget.. that they are doing this for the sake of just doing it… Why is the company willing to have smoking room at EVERY floor. While what we were asking for just ONE ROOM for this… I was about to raised my voice when the other guy clamed me down… sebaik ade mamat tu.. kalau tak … kalau takk… huhu…

marahnye akuu… grrrrr...

2 comments:

Neny said...

Aku dulu pon basuh2 equipment kat pantry aje. So ramai le yg bg remarks mcm2. Sabar aje la. Demi kebaikan anak kita.

Anggap la ini satu perjuangan.Semoga mendapat lactation room yg diimpikan.

Anonymous said...

aku nak tergelak baca entry ko ni, memanglah ko berjaya dapatkan lactation room tu, tapi apa yg diharapkan mmg mengecewakan.. Orang yang buat bilik ni belum kahwin lagi ke? Ke bini dia tak breastfeed anak dia? Tulah yg dia tak faham.. Aku takut apa tau, Ko jugak yg kena bwk langsir dari rumah kang, tak pasal2 ko sendiri yg kena hias bilik ni kang sudahnya...