Mother's milk is the best

Many new mothers in Shanghai go back to work soon after birth but find that they face new obstacles in trying to work in the city and do the best for their babies. Many women today fervently believe that mother's milk is the best for their children and go to work with breast pumps, bottles and ice packs ready to collect and store nourishment for their children.

But that's not quite an accepted thing to do in many offices so they have to scuttle away to dingy toilets and hope that they do not offend anyone as they try to do the best for their babies.

There are signs that attitudes are changing however and some of these changes are being led by building management companies and architects. While today most of the shopping malls and office blocks in town lack specific rooms where mothers can breast-feed, some are rethinking and redesigning so that being a mom doesn't mean embarrassment and difficulties.

To mark the World Breast-feeding Week this year from August 1, a group of mothers staged a breast-feeding "flash" in Hubei Province. Some 30 mothers appeared at a shopping mall in the provincial capital Wuhan and for a short time breast-fed their babies in public.

One of the mothers, 28-year-old Zhou Qianyu, told the Global Times that more family-friendly facilities in China should provide lactation rooms for mothers. "Breast-feeding is the most natural thing, but we often face discrimination," she said. "Shopping malls, hospitals and airports should provide women who breast-feed with a private environment."

The same initiative was also seen in Chongqing and Guiyang during the week.

Wholehearted support

This is a sentiment that Shanghai mom Zhu Yi (not her real name) wholeheartedly supports. Zhu gave birth to her daughter six months ago and returned to work four months later. Trying to continue her breast-feeding program is fraught with difficulties. "Although our company is the only one on the floor and I wouldn't come across any outsiders, I have to take my breast pump into the bathroom which smells." She once tried to use the office conference room to express her milk but too many of her colleagues popped in and out of the room while she was trying to retrieve her milk.

There was no power connection in the women's toilets so she had to buy the battery-powered pump, which cost 1,300 yuan ($204), a great deal more than the standard model. Her milk is plentiful and she has to express it quite often during a day - not just to provide for her child but to prevent her contracting mastitis.

She is not the only one who has breast-fed in her office. A colleague had similar experiences six months ago. "We are really ignored. If we had a maternity room, I would be relaxed when I went to express my milk and would feel at home here," Zhu said.　

Happy at work　

It's a different story for Wang Junjie who works in the Catic building in Jing'an district. She is happy back at work after giving birth nine months ago. When she decided to return to work she wondered whether she would have to stop breast-feeding her son, but the company's human resources department reassured her. The fourth floor of her office building now has a lactation room where new mothers can go to feed babies or express milk.

"I go there, express my milk and put it in the fridge there. The staff there give us a special container each so that we don't accidentally get someone else's milk. And we moms can get together there and talk about child rearing," Wang said.

The lactation room there was built last year under a pilot scheme introduced by the Shanghai Women's Federation and the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions. The room is about 20 square meters, and furnished with six tables each with two chairs. In one corner there's a curtained-off section for mothers who want to maintain privacy.

Xiao Suhua is chairwoman of the Catic Trade Union and explained: "About 3,500 people work here and about 800 are women. About half of the female workers are under 35 and single. At present 13 women are pregnant or breast-feeding."

Catic was the first building in Jing'an district to have a specialized lactation room in an office building. "Now the Jing'an district government is encouraging other offices to feature lactation rooms. Already there are 10 other buildings in the district offering these rooms," said Zhang Pinyi, the manager of the property management company of the Catic building.　

Jing'an has more than 300 high-rise office buildings with about 200,000 people working in them. Keeping the female office workers happy could be important to the companies involved. "The revenue for our district depends largely on the taxation raised from the companies that work from these buildings, so the government wants to attract more companies here and help them retain their female staff," Zhang said.

Attracting companies to the offices is important for property management offices especially those working for older buildings. The Catic building is nearly 20 years old and until recently only 70 percent of its space was leased. But with the refurbishing and installation of the lactation room as well as opening a playground and coffee bars, 90 percent of the building space is now leased.　

Changing times

It's not just breast-feeding rooms that the city's babies need. Zhao Ping lives in the Lianyang community in Pudong New Area. Her granddaughter was born four months ago and after her daughter returned to work Zhao has been looking after the baby - but they don't go out a lot because she cannot find many suitable rooms to change the baby. "When I travel with the baby, I find that the city airports have good mothers' rooms but most of the railway stations lack these," Zhao said.

Some of the major shopping malls offer mothers' rooms and baby changing rooms. Dai Yaling sells children's clothes in a store on the seventh floor of Westgate Mall. The mall has a mothers' room on the same floor. "Not many mothers actually need to use the room, maybe fewer than 20 a day, but it is a real asset for some who enjoy its convenience and have become regular customers," she said.

The Ministry of Health has said that it aims to have half of China's mothers breast-feeding before 2020. Now only 30 percent of infants in the country are nursed exclusively by their mothers. The World Health Organization says breast-feeding can reduce the risk of infant mortality by over 20 percent.