Airport Nursing Lounge a Sad State

Airport Nursing Lounge a Sad State

As any nursing mother knows, finding a quiet place to nurse or pump when you are travelling can be tricky. More and more airports have begun to offer some type of private accommodation but the facilities are often cramped or not exactly private. But when Leslie Morgan Steiner came across the airport nursing lounge at the airport for our nation’s capital, she had to take a picture and post it. Not because she found it wonderful but because she found it appalling. The reason was obvious, the airport had created an airport nursing lounge from the handicapped stall in the woman’s restroom. And when we say they “created” a lounge, we are being generous.

Airport Nursing Lounge a Joke

The very idea that anyone thinks they can simply add an electrical outlet, convert a toilet into a seat and call it an airport nursing lounge is worse than a joke. It is unhygienic. This was pointed out by many who commented on both the Facebook post and the news stories that followed her post. After all, would you take your dinner into the bathroom and sit on the toilet to eat it? Of course not, and that was Steiner’s point in posting. But if there is no other place to nurse or to pump if you are not travelling with your baby, what can you do?

Other Airport Nursing Lounges Excel

In addition to the comments about the unsanitary side-effects of comingling feeding and toilets, other readers posted about airport nursing lounge facilities in places like Tokyo and London that do the job well. While the D.C. Airport did say they were trying their best to find a way to accommodate nursing mothers with the limited amount of space available, they did not indicate any plans to build a true airport nursing lounge. This would be a quiet room with a play area for the other children, privacy for nursing mothers and stations for pumping mothers. If you plan to travel, here is a site that may help you find what you need.  However, for many nursing mothers it seems that they will have to wait to find a proper airport nursing lounge the next time they visit our nation’s capital.