TORONTO – California law requires all airport terminals have a private, sanitary room for mothers to breast feed, or to pump breast milk.
Unfortunately, the law doesn’t go into effect until January 2016. And there may be a few kinks to work out before then, as one woman found out last week.
New mother Haley Picchini says she was led on a wild goose chase through Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in search of a secluded place to pump breast milk, one which ended inside a cluttered janitorial closet.
“Oh God, I was mortified. I was scared. I didn’t want to do anything that would endanger my baby,” Picchini told CBS-2 News in Los Angeles.
She says on both the day she arrived in L.A. and the day she left she tried in vain to find a nursing room.
Signs directing her to a Mother’s Area seemed to lead “nowhere,” while airport staff gave conflicting answers. She says one worker told her there was a nursing room in Terminal 7; another pointed her to Terminal 6 instead.
A third suggested she simply find a low traffic area in between terminals.
“That’s like someone telling you that you should sit and have a bowel movement, covered of course, in the middle of two gates where people can see you,” Picchini said.
According to Picchini, her pump required an electrical outlet, which ruled out a bathroom stall. So she paid $50 U.S. for access to the United Airlines lounge.
But once there, she was directed into the janitorial closet, where she snapped a few pictures of the somewhat-less-than-ideal location.
A spokesperson for United Airlines told CBS that lounge staff asked Picchini if she wanted somewhere more private, but did not force her to go into the janitor’s closet.
The law signed by California Governor Jerry Brown stipulates that:
On or before January 1, 2016, the airport manager of an airport operated by a city, county, city and county, or airport district that conducts commercial operations and that has more than one million enplanements a year shall provide a room or other location at each airport terminal behind the airport security screening area for members of the public to express breast milk in private that meets both of the following conditions:
(1) Includes, at a minimum, a chair and an electrical outlet.
(2) Is located outside the confines of a public restroom.
For now, officials with LAX say there is a nursing room in the airport, located in Terminal 5 – but Picchini says no one was able to direct her to it, or even knew it existed.
LAX is the fifth-busiest airport in the world in terms of passenger traffic, serving over 70.6 million passengers in 2014.
Comments