Update: The Columbus Dispatch has reported about this incident.
Remember a few weeks ago when I wrote a post asking to hear from readers about any day care centers charging more to feed breastfed babies pumped milk?
Well, Jennifer at The Lactivist has tracked down the source of the story, and here it is:
There's a mother named Robin Neorr here in the Columbus area [her baby Ceili is pictured at left]. After her daughter was born late last year and she went back to work, she enrolled her daughter in one of the City Kids Daycare [centers] in downtown Columbus.
Robin was told that she would need to pay an extra $50 per WEEK because her 3 month old daughter is breastfed. You read that right, an extra $50 a week to feed that little girl the best food available for her.
Why?
Well, Robin was given several reasons.
She was told that her milk was a hazardous body fluid that had to be kept separate from all other food. As such, the day care center kept the prepared bottles of breast milk in a separate refrigerator in the director's office. (They even labeled it with a "bio-hazard" sticker, apparently confusing breast milk with, I don't know...uranium?) They also claimed that they would have to purchase a separate warming pot for heating up the breastmilk.
The center even suggested to another family that they were considering not accepting breastmilk at all, and that "all day care centers are going to have this policy soon."
Jen did some great research about the state regulations for handling both formula and breastmilk, which demonstrates that there is no additional work required to serve breastmilk. In fact, the regulations are considerably more onerous for serving formula!
As I wrote back in that earlier post, breastfeeding is not a hazardous bodily fluid, according to the Centers for Disease Control, so these extra precautions are completely unnecessary. And, as I wrote about earlier, breastfed babies do not require extra work, and actually save the centers money.
So, what can you do? You can email the owner of the day care chain at citykidsdaycar@aol.com (I just did) or call (614) 464-1411 or (614) 777-4320 to complain.
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