Fourteen years ago, I started my breastfeeding journey when I gave birth to my first child. As an assistant vice president in the financial services industry, I couldn’t imagine how I could work 50-60 hours a week, commute an hour and half each way to work, and provide breast milk to my baby. Fast forward to today, we are seeing so many companies providing exceptional maternity benefits such as work-from-home flexibility, wellness rooms to support new moms who decide to pump at work, breast milk shipping for travelling moms, and new parent gift boxes. After five years as a stay-at-home mom, I am so grateful for the second chapter of my career focusing on women’s health – specifically, the prenatal and postpartum time period. It is incredibly humbling to see young new moms “want it all,” and in some cases “have it all.”
The transition from maternity leave back to work is possibly the third largest life event, apart from getting married and giving birth. It’s a time where career women, full of drive and ambition, realize they have been given the gift of motherhood, and one of the many job requirements is to feed their babies in whichever way, breast milk or formula, is best for them and their family. Today, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)1, 84% of moms choose to breastfeed. And although each mom’s goals are personal and most often kept within their most trusted circle of family and friends, it is often a goal that aligns with the recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatric – 6 months of exclusive breast milk and 12 months of breastfeeding. So here in lies the problem…maternity leave and returning to work straddles that goal. As a result, the breastfeeding rate at six months postpartum drops to 57% according to the CDC Breastfeeding Report Card1.