Category: Breastfeeding in public

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Summer Travel, Breastfeeding, and the PUMP Act: What Nursing Parents Need to Know

Summer is a season of family vacations, road trips, beach days, and travel adventures. For breastfeeding parents returning to work after the birth of a baby, summer can also bring unique challenges as they balance maintaining their milk supply while navigating airports, hotels, conference centers, and temporary work assignments.

Fortunately, recent federal protections have made it easier for many breastfeeding employees to continue providing human milk for their babies. The Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers (PUMP) Act expanded workplace protections for lactating employees and has important implications for working parents who travel during the summer months.

What Is the PUMP Act?

The PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act, commonly known as the PUMP Act, was signed into law in December 2022. The law expanded existing federal protections for breastfeeding employees by requiring most employers to provide:

  • Reasonable break time to express milk during the workday
  • A private space that is shielded from view and free from intrusion
  • Protection for millions of workers who were previously excluded from federal lactation accommodation laws
  • The ability for employees to seek legal remedies if employers fail to comply

Before the PUMP Act, many salaried workers had protections under the Affordable Care Act, but millions of employees—including teachers, nurses, agricultural workers, transportation workers, and many others—were not fully covered. The PUMP Act significantly broadened coverage, helping more families meet their breastfeeding goals.

Why Summer Travel Can Be Challenging

Maintaining lactation while traveling presents logistical hurdles even for experienced breastfeeding parents. Common concerns include:

Changes in Routine

Breastfeeding and milk production often thrive on consistency. Travel may disrupt normal feeding schedules, pumping sessions, sleep patterns, and meal times.

Long Flights and Layovers

Air travel can mean extended periods away from a comfortable pumping space. Delayed flights, crowded terminals, and unpredictable schedules may make it difficult to pump as frequently as needed.

Conferences and Business Travel

Many parents travel for work during the summer months. Conferences, training sessions, and off-site meetings can create challenges when finding appropriate times and locations for milk expression.

Hydration and Heat

Summer temperatures can increase fluid needs and contribute to fatigue. While hydration does not directly increase milk production beyond normal physiological needs, adequate fluid intake helps support overall maternal health and comfort.

How the PUMP Act Helps Traveling Employees

One of the most important aspects of the PUMP Act is that workplace lactation protections do not disappear simply because an employee is traveling for work.

If an employee is attending a conference, working at a temporary site, or participating in employer-sponsored travel, the employer generally remains responsible for providing reasonable break time and an appropriate pumping space.

This means that employers should make reasonable efforts to ensure nursing employees have access to:

  • Private lactation spaces at conference venues
  • Appropriate break schedules
  • Time to express milk during long meetings
  • Accommodations during work-related travel

Many conference centers, airports, and convention facilities now offer dedicated lactation rooms, reflecting growing recognition of breastfeeding families’ needs.

Here is a link to an article that can help mothers find these pumping pods at airports.

Air Travel and Breast Milk

Parents often worry about flying with expressed milk. The good news is that breast milk, infant formula, and feeding supplies receive special consideration through airport security procedures.

When traveling:

  • Inform security officers that you are carrying breast milk.
  • Breast milk may be transported in quantities greater than standard liquid limits.
  • Ice packs, freezer packs, and gel packs used to cool milk are generally permitted.
  • Review current transportation guidelines before travel, as procedures can change.

Many airports now provide lactation pods or nursing suites that offer private spaces for pumping or breastfeeding.

Tips for Protecting Your Milk Supply While Traveling

Plan Ahead

Before traveling, identify:

  • Airport lactation rooms
  • Hotel refrigeration options
  • Conference lactation facilities
  • Nearby locations where pumping can occur if needed

Maintain Your Pumping Schedule

Milk production operates on supply and demand. Attempting to maintain a schedule similar to your normal routine can help prevent discomfort and protect milk production.

Pack Extra Supplies

Consider bringing:

  • Extra pump parts
  • Additional milk storage bags
  • Cleaning supplies
  • Portable battery packs
  • Backup manual pumps

Unexpected travel delays are common during summer vacation season.

Learn to Hand Express (if you don’t already know)

This is another great reason to be sure you know how to hand express your milk. You can find information on hand expressing here.

Hand expression has no parts to pack and can be an easier way to maintain your expression schedule while traveling.

Know Your Rights

Employees should familiarize themselves with workplace lactation protections before traveling. Having a conversation with supervisors or human resources departments ahead of time can prevent misunderstandings and ensure appropriate accommodations are available.

Breastfeeding-Friendly Travel Benefits Everyone

Supporting breastfeeding employees is not simply a legal obligation—it is also good for families and workplaces. Research consistently demonstrates that breastfeeding is associated with improved maternal and infant health outcomes. When employees receive adequate lactation support, they often experience greater job satisfaction and are more likely to remain in the workforce.

The PUMP Act represents an important step toward recognizing that breastfeeding and employment can coexist successfully. As more workplaces, airports, hotels, and conference centers adopt lactation-friendly practices, traveling while breastfeeding becomes increasingly manageable.

Looking Ahead

Summer travel should be an opportunity for connection, professional growth, and family memories—not a source of anxiety about maintaining milk production. The protections established by the PUMP Act help ensure that nursing parents do not have to choose between their careers and their breastfeeding goals.

Whether you’re heading to a family reunion, attending a professional conference, or embarking on a summer vacation, preparation, knowledge of your rights, and access to supportive accommodations can help make the journey smoother.

Breastfeeding parents deserve the time, space, and support necessary to continue providing human milk for their babies and to continue their journies along the Milky Way—at home, at work, and wherever summer adventures may lead.

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How do breastfeeding benches, lactation pods, “Breastfeeding Welcome Here” window clings signify a culture’s acceptance of breastfeeding in the wild? 

Ambling around my step-dad’s deceased brother’s home, a red canvas book caught my attention. “The Great Cars” its title. I thumbed through its musty pages without expectation of finding any passages of interest, but to my delight, a print of an early 20th century De Dion-Bouton cars advertisement depicting a breastfeeding dyad! Two other passengers look on attentively and lovingly. There’s nothing jarring about the scene (well, except no car seat or seat belts); instead, the mother and baby are seamlessly woven into the imagery, part of the motion of the moment captured.

A snapshot from the book

As I studied the page, a wistfulness washed over me; a longing for breastfeeding to (once again) be effortlessly infused into our existence. 

Instead, when I encounter a breastfeeding dyad in public, an awkwardness washes over me. I am thrilled and want to throw confetti, because this should be celebrated, and I am thrilled, draw my gaze away so not to gawk, because this is how babies are (almost always) intended to be fed and cared for. 

In the States, it seems we have been sitting at this cumbersome crossroad for quite some time, where breastfeeding is recognized as a good thing, and yet, we shame the act in public and design our lives in a way that makes breastfeeding impossible: no paid parental leave, harmful birthing practices, the unrestricted advertising of commercial formulas… 

For those of you who drive, have you ever been caught at a congested intersection, red traffic lights flash, each vehicle lurches forward just a few inches at a time and so you’re left to guess whose turn it is? When I encounter lactation pods, discreet breastfeeding benches and “Breastfeeding Welcome Here” window clings, this same uncertainty, an abruptness, hits me. 

Lactation pods now pepper public spaces, a gauge of living in Pump Nation (I think credit for this term goes to Kimberly Seals Allers.) The pods have been extolled for good for nursing the distractible, though as many have argued, “creating an object specifically to conceal breastfeeding, surely justifies the stigma” of breasts in public.   

This discreet breastfeeding bench was designed with this sentiment in mind, though it has also been criticized for divorcing dyads from full integration into society. The bench has also been criticized for its pink hue, which for some might seem a silly thing to focus on, and for others may be justified for colors’ sometimes incredible power.  

But as Natashah Hitti writes:  “‘Instead of isolating mums, Heer allows them to stay in the environment they want to be in and keep control of it,’ said [the designer]. ‘If mum has company, they can sit next to her. This is especially important for mothers with another child.’”

Photo by Luiza Braun

Breastfeeding benches installed in the Southwest are an emblem of celebrating breastfeeding in public and are coupled with other initiatives like accompanying QR codes with the Kansas Breastfeeding Coalition directory so that families can find the support they need based on their zip code and billboards. 

On various establishments’ windows– libraries, shops and cafes for instance– clings read “Breastfeeding Welcome Here” perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the reality that breastfeeding is not encouraged everywhere.  (Remember, it wasn’t until 2018 that breastfeeding became legal across all 50 states.)

The Australian Breastfeeding Association baby care room initiative circumvents this predicament in a way as it strives to enhance breastfeeding journeys through identification of venues equipped with proper feeding and care amenities in order to foster inclusive and supportive environments. These spaces are designated by a “Breastfeeding is Welcome Everywhere” sticker. That simple tweak in language seems to make a difference. 

In her final year as an Industrial Design student, Alanna Bamber was challenged to design a comfortable breastfeeding seat for the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa. Bamber shares her process on the Ingenium Channel and writes: 

“While lactation rooms are wonderful and provide a necessary function, they may embolden people who disapprove of breastfeeding in shared public spaces to say, ‘There is a place for that, why do it in the view of others? Cover up!’ I wanted to create a piece of furniture that acts as an invitation for mothers to breastfeed in a shared space, and in some small way contribute to a more positive perception of public breastfeeding.”

Photo credit: WIC Image Gallery

Bamber’s rendering features one armrest to “allow people of any body size to use the seat and prevent it from being an obstruction when nursing bigger children.” 

Further south, a Brazilian team creates an urban design to normalize breastfeeding. For me, their design evokes the same feelings of integration that the painting did, where accommodation does not sacrifice assimilation. 

 

 

“Mama’s got milk. Educate. Normalize. Nurse in Public!”

Their work is situated in the Proximity of Care Design Guide developed by Arup and the Bernard van Leer Foundation which helps urban planners, designers, developers, city leaders and early childhood development practitioners embed child and family-friendly design principles into their work.

In a final example, an example of how “all roads lead to breastfeeding”, Wanda Lau covers how architects, namely Kim Holden, AIA, CABC, CLC  founder of Doula X Design can transform birth and postpartum experiences in the U.S. through the built world.

For more, check out  Our Milky Way’s Empathy in architecture and ‘Being in a womb’ or ‘playing musical chairs’: the impact of place and space on infant feeding in NICUs by Renée Flacking and Fiona Dykes. 

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