Any new mother will tell you that breastfeeding, under the very best circumstances, is emotionally and physically taxing. While increasingly common in the workplace, accommodations such as private lactation rooms, permissive scheduling and clean, dedicated refrigerators for milk storage, are still the exception rather than the norm. And that’s for nursing mothers with regular, predictable work hours.
Surgeons work long, erratic shifts – often on their feet for 18 hours or more during surgical cases, post-op responsibilities and patient rounds. For surgeons who are breastfeeding, it can feel impossible to find the balance between caring for their patients and providing for their own children, even more so when they are in the early stages of their careers.
Tessa London-Bounds, cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon at the Gill Heart & Vascular Institute at the University of Kentucky, conducted an online survey, with 862 surgeons responding with their age, career stage at the birth of each child, and the year when their children were born. The results of the study paint a grim picture of support for breastfeeding surgeons. More than 40 percent reported a lack of a dedicated lactation room. For those who did have a room to pump breast milk, 37 percent did not have an accessible place to store milk. The distance between the operating room and the lactation room was reported by more than half of respondents to be too far, adding the unnecessary burden of having to factor in travel time in addition to the time spent pumping. In addition to the logistical challenges of pumping and storing milk, breastfeeding surgeons surveyed reported discrimination and pushback from other surgeons when they asked for accommodations.
Because of the resistance, many breastfeeding surgeons opted to delay having children until after residency; the median delivery age of respondents was 34.5 years. For those who breastfed in residency, nearly 75 percent reported missing career opportunities because of breastfeeding.