Page 1910 - Week 06 - Thursday, 9 June 2016
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in the chamber. Maxi was 3½ months old and exclusively breastfed at the time; there was not any other option but to feed. I am grateful to the women who came before in making changes to make that possible in this place.
The World Health Organisation recommend exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life. The reason they do this is that breast milk is the ideal food for newborns and infants. It gives them the nutrients they need for healthy development, and it contains the antibodies that help protect infants from common childhood illnesses. Breast milk is readily available and affordable and ensures an infant has adequate nutrition. It is also worth noting that breastfeeding has great benefits for mums where it can be achieved. It reduces the risk of breast and ovarian cancer, type 2 diabetes and post-partum depression. Long-term benefits for children who have been breastfed show that breastfed babies are less likely to be overweight or obese once they reach adolescence; and they are less likely to have type 2 diabetes and they also perform better on intelligence tests.
Many in the community believe that workplace changes required to make women able to feed their babies or to pump milk to feed their babies have already been made. I think many people my age and younger would be surprised to find that we have not got all the details sorted out yet. It is sometimes a rude shock for young women once they have had their first baby to come back into the workforce or think about coming back into the workforce and realise that there are a lot of changes that still need to be made. Very few workplaces are really set up to accommodate breastfeeding, breast pumping or the bottle-feeding of a very young baby.
We all tell our daughters today that they can choose what they do with their lives and that they can choose how they blend their work and family lives—that they can choose to work or stay home or to have a blend of both. But if we are going to be honest, we need to tell them that a lot of things need to change in the workplace for them to be empowered to continue to breastfeed or breast pump to feed their baby up to the recommended six months.
We must not expect women in one of their more vulnerable states—being pregnancy or breastfeeding—to undertake the negotiations to ensure that they are able to achieve work-life balance. Every mother strives the best she can for the health and wellbeing of her baby. The workplace was not designed for women or for their babies. We are still playing catch-up to create an environment in which women and babies are, to the greatest extent possible, welcome.
Babies are a natural and normal part of life. Each of us started out as one. I encourage women to have the babies that they desire and I encourage workplaces to do the maximum, not the minimum, that they can to accommodate the breastfeeding requirements of mums.
Ten years ago, when I breastfed my first baby here in the Assembly while I was volunteering on the Liberal corridor, a breastfeeding room was actually built. This room had no lock on the door. It just goes to show how difficult it can be to get the workforce to adapt to the physical surroundings of the realities of women’s lives that it was considered acceptable to create a breastfeeding and breast-pumping room which did not have a lock on the door.
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