Pumping breastmilk in bathrooms is a common, albeit unspoken, practice at health care conferences

Even though Erin Booth was not thrilled about having to travel to Philadelphia for a conference at six weeks postpartum, this one at least advertised having a private lactation space. This was back in 2013, when such accommodations were a rarity.

The first bad sign was having to walk clear across the convention center to get there, cutting into her already brief pumping window. Booth’s hopes were fully dashed when she walked in and saw the setup: round tables lined with chairs facing one another. No fridge, no sink, no outlets — which pumps required back then.

“I don’t know what they thought we were going to do, sit around and pump at the tables?” said Booth, an account director at a large biotech company.

But that’s not all. The room had — wait for it — entirely glass walls, no blinds or screens. Anyone walking by could see inside.

“My thought was, clearly whoever has set this up has never pumped a day in their life,” Booth said. Needless to say, she did not use the room.

Close to 100 people reached out to STAT following my column on the difficulty of pumping at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, many of them sharing similar stories. It turns out, pumping in bathroom stalls is quite common for breastfeeding moms who attend conferences that are important for their jobs. The founder of one biotech company said she did so right before presenting on stage.

It’s a fact of life many of them endure in silence for fear of jeopardizing their careers, they said. Most of those who appreciated STAT drawing attention to the issue also declined to speak on record, citing professional reasons.

“There’s this thing about being a female: You just want to show that you’re on par with the guys and so asking for any sort of accommodation just feels like a weakness,” said Aoife Brennan, CEO of the biotech firm Synlogic and a three-time mom who has pumped in many a bathroom stall.

In fact, it wasn’t just a STAT reporter who pumped in bathroom stalls at last week’s JPM after being unable to access the locked lactation room. Multiple pharmaceutical company executives said they also pumped in bathrooms at this and JPM conferences in prior years. Some of them said they didn’t ask organizers about a lactation room because they assumed there wasn’t one. A spokesperson for the conference declined to comment.

A wealth of research shows that breastfeeding is protective for babies and moms alike. It helps babies develop strong immune systems and protects them against asthma, diabetes, sudden infant death syndrome, and certain infections. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months and continuing until they’re 2 years old or older.

Yet even in the face of such emphatic evidence, many moms report feeling ashamed to ask conference organizers whether they’ve established a private, clean space for them to pump milk for their babies.

Pumping after returning to work is a challenge even outside of traveling to conferences. People who return to work postpartum must pump every few hours, for 10 to 20 minutes each session, and refrigerate the milk in sterile containers to feed their babies later. Missing a session can cause pain, infection, and a lower milk supply, since milk production goes up and down based on how frequently someone pumps or feeds.

Even if the actual pumping takes 15 minutes, assembling, disassembling, and washing up to a dozen individual breast pump parts can take even longer. Those parts also need to be sterilized regularly.

People often ask Patrice Meagher what it’s like to pump at work. Meagher, the founder and CEO of MilkMate, a company that provides lactation rooms for employers, finds that once people understand what’s involved, they’re more driven to help make it easier.

“I’m like, ‘Imagine you had to pack up your coffee maker in the morning and bring it to work with you and walk down the hallway and go into a strange little closet, take your clothes off, set up the coffee maker, brew the coffee, but if you forget the filter or the coffee beans you can’t actually brew the coffee,’” Meagher said, “and then if you don’t brew the coffee, you’re going to start leaking coffee. And then you have to brew the coffee three more times throughout the rest of the day, bring your coffee home in a thermos and feed it to your child and then clean all the parts and do it all over again the next day.”

It’s easier than ever to make these accommodations. Companies like New York-based MilkMate have cropped up that make all sorts of lactation rooms and pods specifically for employers and conferences. Other companies have devised ways to safely ship milk home rather than having to lug around a cooler. In fact, several pod companies saw STAT’s column as an opportunity to market their services.

MilkMate has done conferences, but most of its clients are employers in the financial, real estate, and fashion sectors looking for permanent spaces in their offices.

Once a conference or employer has added these accommodations, Meagher said it’s imperative that they be proactive about advertising what exactly they’re offering — whether the space has electrical outlets, sinks, refrigerators, tables, chairs, private spaces — where it’s located, and how to gain access. In other words, don’t make attendees ask for it, put it on the conference website or brochure. That’s what the tech conference CES did.

HLTH, a glitzy health care industry networking conference that drew more than 10,000 people to Las Vegas in October 2023, did not describe its accommodations on its website. Several women who attended reported there being one small lactation room where there were regularly five to six women at a time pumping with no dividers between them. Conference organizers did not comment.

Ellen DaSilva, the CEO of the startup Summer Health, was one of them. She guessed there were roughly 20 nursing mothers attending the conference. Instead of using the tiny, crowded room, DaSilva said she opted to use her hand pump, which does not require an outlet, in the bathroom.

“It’s very clear that these conference organizers don’t have anyone on staff who has been a nursing mom and understands what the experience is like,” said DaSilva, whose third child is 9 months old. “Nobody is doing it out of malice.”

DaSilva said she understands why some women don’t ask conference organizers whether there will be a lactation room. For HLTH in 2023, she did find out ahead of time, but there have been conferences where she hasn’t.

“I think women are just so conditioned to assume the worst that they don’t think to ask,” DaSilva said.