Thursday, August 5, 2010

The Booby Room

You may have heard the new Obama healthcare law that mandates businesses have a private room for breast feeding/pumping (the dilly-yo). I give this dude a lot of crap for some things, but I have to give this one to him. On Tuesday our office manager called me over to her desk to tell me that she had just received a call from corporate and they wanted to know what room we had available for nursing mothers. As you might read in the law, businesses with less that 50 employees don't need to comply because they can claim it would be too much of an expense. In our Denver office we only have around 23 employees and of those, four are women, three who would potentially use the room. But our main headquarters has almost 400 employees. I am just assuming corporate feels like they should provide facilities in all their offices to be fair, in which case, thanks dudes.  The office manager said that corporate first asked if the storage room would be adequate. Thank god she knew I was preggos because she responded 'um no, it is full of boxes and shipping supplies, the computer servers are in there and there is no space to sit, let alone relax'. In all honesty I hadn't even thought about the storage room. I was planning on plopping down in a bathroom stall and dealing with the influx of ladies. The thought of trying to pump while someone else is doing the number twosie definitely grosses me the f out! But that is what I was expecting to do. Until now. There just so happens to be a vacant office back here in the architecture hole. We are kind of secluded from the rest of the office. My O.M. told corporate that would be a good room and suddenly things went into motion. A locksmith showed up yesterday to put a lock on the door and today the building manager came in with a blind consultant to pick out blinds for the window. All of this was pretty awesome news, except for one small thing. Our office is moving in less than a year. By the time nugget comes out, we might already be in our next office. There's a chance we'll be here through June or July, in which case, that will be my go-to booby room for a couple of months. But the remodel is definitely premature and there is one other thing that is starting to bother me. My boss was over today with another co-worker and we were all kind of laughing about how they were putting in a dedicated room so pre-maturely. Besides the two of them and the O.M., no one else in the office knows about nugget stowing away in my belly. My co-worker then turns to me and says 'you know now when everyone finds out your are pregnant they are going to blame you for the nursing room'. Gulp. It wasn't like I petitioned corporate to provide a spot for me, but the timing is pretty darn perfect for it to appear that way. I guess what bothers me more than that is the fact that everyone is going to know what I am doing in there. Where's Natalie? oh back in her milking pen I see. Oh well, I am just excited that there is an option besides a bathroom stall!

4 comments:

  1. That's definitely great that you're getting the benefits of Obamacare! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hadn't heard about that, but that is definitely good! We have a storage room that is the "booby room" and a sign is put on the outside that says "please do not disturb." It's pretty funny, but over the 4 years I've been with my company, that room has been used A LOT for more than just storage. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Who cares what people think - you now have your own room to whip the twins out in at your place of business!

    That is pretty freaking cool! ;)

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's great that you have dedicated space to pump! Just as an FYI, the military has similar mandates, but has declared bathrooms are not sufficient because it's not sanitary enough for pumping!!

    ReplyDelete