In 2020, it was reported that women were leaving the workforce in droves due to the Covid-19 pandemic. With children at home, working mothers were compelled to report for caregiving duty, sacrificing their careers in the process.
In 2022, the International Labour Organization released data placing the number of women who left the workforce in 2020 at 2 million. The data covered 189 countries, and, shockingly, these women were working mothers. Additional data revealed that working moms with young children (less than six years old), are more likely to leave the labour market.
Today, women are still leaving the workforce, while many are contemplating downgrading to jobs with easier roles, so as to juggle motherhood and career. And then there are new mothers with newborn children - a more intense ball game altogether.
Breastfeeding mothers experience a host of challenges that not only affect them professionally, mentally and physically, but also impact their children’s growth and development.
During this year’s breastfeeding week, Career Mothers for Exclusive Breastfeeding (CAMFEB), an association that champions breastfeeding support for working mothers, hosted a run during which they launched a Lactation Pod, which they would like to see in commercial buildings and work spaces.
The pod is a convenient private space for new mothers to express their milk while at work. DN2 Property had a chat with CAMFEB’s Founder and Executive Director, Martha Mugi, who explained why this lactation pod is a necessity, and the inspiration behind its simple, unique design, the choice of materials and the needs this pod is addressing. But first, we take a trip where it all began.
CAMFEB was born out of personal experience. When I had my second child, I really wanted to do exclusive breastfeeding. The ministry of health had preached a lot about the importance of exclusive breastfeeding, at the time. With my first born, I was not able to do exclusive breastfeeding. I got my three months maternity leave and after that I had very long working hours. I knew nothing about expressing milk at the time - 15 years ago.
Plus, my job was a bit demanding and we had long shifts. Even if I knew how to express myself, I would still not manage. My first born only breastfed for three months, and when I went back to work the milk dried up. We tried to introduce formula milk but the baby refused to take it and we resorted to cow milk.
Right now, I have acquired more knowledge and I know cow milk is only recommended when the baby is at least 12 months. But at the time, that was the only way we could survive.
By the time I was having my second child, there was a lot more information about health and nutrition for newborns and I really wanted to do exclusive breastfeeding for the recommended six months.
When I went back to work I kept telling my colleagues, ‘I really need to do exclusive breastfeeding though I didn’t know how to’. I kept talking about how we need a system that supports such an arrangement because I knew so many mums were going through the same experience.
How did CAMFEB, the association, come about?
CAMFEB started as a Facebook group in 2015 where we built a community of other mothers who were interested in navigating career and motherhood. Over time, I developed interest in matters of breastfeeding. I would get a lot of questions about breastfeeding issues and I realised I did not know enough about the subject.
Martha Mugi, the Founder and Executive Director of Career Mothers for Exclusive Breastfeeding (CAMFEB).
Photo credit: Pool
I decided to take a course to learn more about it. I signed up for training by the Kenyatta National Hospital. There is a course they offer on lactation and breastfeeding. After a while, I took another course by an organisation called Elizabeth Project International. This second course equipped me with the skills to become a breastfeeding counsellor.
Along the way, I learned about the World Breastfeeding Week, which is celebrated in the first week of August, since 1992. It is a time to create awareness and call for breastfeeding support. In 2017, I organised a walk championing breastfeeding support. We had about 100 people in attendance and I would say it was a success.
At this point, we realised the need to be more serious with the association. We were approaching organisations to partner with and most of them were interested but they only wanted to work with formally registered entities. We went through the process of registering CAMFEB as an association.
There is an ongoing study by Bocconi University in Italy. CAMFEB is an implementing partner of the study in Kenya. We are working alongside other partners like the Kenya Association for Breastfeeding and Remit. We started with a survey and sensitisation.
The survey is about how breastfeeding support affects the productivity of working mums, at the workplace. We are also educating women about the importance of breastfeeding, why they need to do exclusive breastfeeding and how they can do it. We are tackling emerging issues such as how to go about exclusive breastfeeding as a working mum.
For instance, if someone has expressed their milk, how do they store it, or how do they warm it. The survey started last year (2023) with a pilot project, which involved several public schools in Nairobi, and now we are implementing the upscale project. This upscale phase involves five counties and we’ve reached out to about 300 schools.
The study is still ongoing and the final report is not out yet, though when we were doing the sensitisation talks alongside the Kenya Association for Breastfeeding, we could see that the working mums are extremely interested in the subject. They had a lot of questions and we can see a dire need for breastfeeding support and education. Inasmuch as women get information from the hospital, there are a lot of gaps.
In addition, part of the study involved a pilot project where we had to set up lactation spaces for staff workers in the participating schools. There are a lot of takeaways from this process. We got stuck at the part where organisations are only focused on creating entirely new rooms.
Traditionally, schools have limited space. But we also have a very young workforce in the education sector which needs a lot of support. When the pilot was done, a lot of schools were not able to come up with solutions - even when money is available.
Yes, initially we came up with a temporary solution for the schools. We introduced a partitioning curtain, a partitioning stand, a makeshift sink, a fridge, a bucket and a drainage bucket, as well as a seat and a table. The curtain’s material is very thick for privacy and these are things you can put in any space that is not in use at the moment. It could be a home science room or any other space with limited traffic.
After this experience we were stunned by the fact that there are no solutions - such that if a building lacks an inbuilt lactation room then there is nothing to do. Many organisations say they do not have space for a lactation room and some imagine that setting up one is costly. Our idea of a lactation pod came in to address this challenge.
We are addressing the fact that organisations do not have extra space in their rented workstation to reconfigure and introduce a lactation. We came up with a design that can be imported to any space without changing it. The dimensions and the materials are also easy to accommodate.
After the pilot study, we had to think about how to come up with a convenient space and we learned a lot from the makeshift provisions with partitioning curtains. But now when it comes to corporate, you can’t really have a partitioning curtain. Corporate brands want to maintain consistency in their look and feel and they need something that integrates well with their existing workspace. But the challenge - which is lack of space is still the same.
In designing the pod, we started looking for more information on alternative solutions. We came across a website that has designed a lactation pod and amazingly, they had shared everything, including the measurements. From my perspective, these are very open and generous people, plus we do not need to reinvent the wheel.
We worked with the measurements and the design, using MDF which is locally available. It is easy to work with, it looks presentable and it is easy to clean. We launched the pod during our event for the World Breastfeeding Week this year (2024)
Working mums have navigated breastfeeding and career, despite the challenges but why is it important to have lactation spaces in their work stations?
When a working mum has a child, they breastfeed on demand for the first three months, during maternity leave. Any time the baby needs to breastfeed, the mum feeds them because they are at home with each other. But when the mum goes back to work, they do not take their child to work. The milk supply flows according to the demand, for most women.
Therefore, if someone is not able to breastfeed, they need to express the same amount as what the baby was breastfeeding. If they do not express, the milk supply begins to dry up. Breastfeeding follows a supply and demand pattern. With lactation spaces at work, lactating mothers can maintain a consistent milk supply for as long as they are expressing.
Most women have been improvising. In my experience, I had to find a store which was very dusty with files everywhere, but at least it had a door. I would go in and place a seat against the door, from the inside, to prevent someone from coming in. Note that expressing is not breastfeeding. Mothers can breastfeed their children from anywhere because it is accepted and respected, but you can’t just express from your desk at work or other public spaces.
We haven’t done the costing yet, but ideally, the pod comes in as a readymade space. Employers just need to provide a small space where the pod will stand. The beauty about the design and the materials is that they can be brought into a building separately and reconstructed on site. In case a business has to move, they could also disassemble the materials carefully and move with their pod to their new workspace.
It depends on usage and the traffic. But once people start interacting with the pod, we will keep tabs on the durability and take note of whether it is easy to use. We will learn more about the things that might need to be fixed over time. It is a new space and we will engage and learn more about it as time goes by.
Ideally, which part of an office or commercial building should the pod occupy?
Our thinking is that the pod could occupy spaces that are less used, however, if there is a lot of traffic in an office or building, the pod can still be placed anywhere because the mums will still have privacy, as the pod is lockable. Besides, breastfeeding is not a shameful activity. Remember, the big issue is availability of space in existing workspaces, so corporates and employers should not feel the need to have a lot of extra room to bring in the pod. It occupies about 16 square feet of space.
It’s a simple, easy to use space, with a comfortable seat, a socket, a working surface, ventilation and a lockable door which shows when the pod is engaged. It also has wheels in case it needs to be moved.
In Kenya we have the Health Act, 2017 section 71 and 72 that requires employers to set up a lactation space for their employees. The government is doing a lot to ensure breastfeeding is protected. However, implementation is a challenge. We are now trying to close the gap. A lot of employers imagine lactation spaces are a very expensive affair and they need to set aside big budgets to adhere with this legal provision, but that does not have to be the case.
