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Good news: Lactating woman will be allotted time to pump during her medical exams

Jill

A Harvard student is being given extra time on her medical licensing exams so that she can pump breast milk. Awesome.

The fact that a woman was denied pumping time during a medical licensing exam is particularly galling. You’d think they’d be aware of the physical complications that can occur if they refuse to let the woman leave the room to pump. It’s a two-day nine-hour exam, with a total of 45 minutes of break time. That’s difficult for anyone, but a huge disadvantage to a woman who isn’t able to fully pump during the allotted breaks, and is then forced to take the test while in significant amounts of pain.

The medical board is appealing to protect the “integrity of the exam.”

Let’s hope the current ruling holds.

Thanks to Miss Kate for the link.

21 thoughts on Good news: Lactating woman will be allotted time to pump during her medical exams

  1. The medical board is appealing to protect the “integrity of the exam.”

    What, do they think she has the answers written on her nipples or something?

    I don’t why they don’t let her pump *during* the exam.

  2. From the article, it’s a two-day, nine hour exam for her, in order to accommodate her dyslexia and adhd. Typical medical students take it in one day, apparently. I’d be more concerned about the effects of dyslexia and adhd on patient care than nursing.

  3. Thank you for talking about this, because I’ve been debating the issue with someone, and losing.

    My friend says that it’s not fair for Ms. Currier to have extra break time, when she can relax/think, if the same amount of time isn’t allotted to other students. It’s an unfair advantage, since test-taking is stressful and more/longer breaks can be a big help. Ms. Currier should have to take the test under the same conditions as anyone else, or skip it now and take it later.

    She says that Ms. Currier either should’ve timed her pregnancy differently, or timed her breastfeeding differently. She could’ve weaned her child before now, for example, since she knew that this test was coming up. If she can’t time her career decisions and childcare decisions well now (according to my friend), how is she going to juggle these things in the future?

    I’ve tried to argue that it’s not exactly correct to punish women for having children and careers simultaneously, but my friend says that this isn’t a punishment, it’s a consequence of bad decisions.

    Help?

    (I swear, this isn’t a case where “my friend” = me.)

  4. They set up a room for her but weren’t able to monitor her pumping milk AND taking the exam. The decision to accomodate lactating mothers adequately is overdue.

    But I can understand why many people feel uneasy about the woman. She failed the exam, having extra time for dyslexia and adhd, before, had someone paid by the uni to take her notes because of her learning disabilities and now she’s suing to be able to start her residency. Few people get so many accomodations during their university time. And no one wants a doctor saying, “please, give me 5 more minutes to figure out what to do now, you see, I have adhd and dyslexia”.

  5. It strikes me that an additional hour is much more than would be needed, in addition to the 45-min of break time, to pump milk. It takes 15 minutes to do that, 20 including setup. With nine hours, she’d need two breaks. Am I missing something here?

    And yeah, with no additional info, and a choice between a doctor who needed additional time to make decisions and one who didn’t, I think many of us would choose the latter.

  6. I’m also a bit skeptical about this being presented as “medical board wouldn’t let nursing mother pump during exam.” People get accommodated by exam boards all the time for various things. Hell, during law school, I got extra time on some of my exams because my carpal tunnel was flaring up, and it was difficult to hold a pen for two or three hours straight.

    My sense is that the board balked at the additional time for pumping on top of the extra day she got for dyslexia and ADHD. Particularly because she’d already failed with the extra day.

    Because I can’t believe she’s the first nursing mother to ever request an accommodation for pumping breast milk from the medical board.

  7. I attend school with foreign students for whom English is a third or fourth language and they don’t have nearly as much “accomodation” as this woman. I think we should recall recent articles written about persons gaming the system. The SAT, MCAT, and LCAT all had testers given extra time for spurious disabilities.

    No, I would not be comfortable with this “Doctor”. There is an expectation of competence and selflessness during practice that she does not seem to adhere to . Rather, she seems to feel entitled. Shades of the Bush girls and Paris. “Free, White, and Over Twenty-One”.

  8. octogalore – did you ever work and pump? I needed 3-4 breaks in an 8-9 hour day. I pumped right before work. Then 2 hours into work, then over lunch I usually pumped twice, then 2 hours after lunch and then right after work. Anything less and I got plugged ducts (the precursor to mastitis).

    I used every minute of my 15 minute breaks to pump (and faced major discrimination from my boss). Then, like I said, I pumped twice. Or if it was a good day, my wonderful hubby brought the baby to me to nurse (and he would nurse pretty much the whole hour). I still ended up with plugged ducts more than once.

    It’s unfortunate that this issue has come up with this particular person. It’s an important point to make, but she’s already asked for a lot of accomodations.

  9. Sorry, but I have to disagree…I don’t think this is “awesome” at all. This particular woman already gets two 9-hour days to take this exam because of dyslexia and ADHD – everybody else has to do it in one. She takes the exam in a private room – everybody else has to take it in a large room with all the other examinees. She took a year-and-a-half off from med school, then deliberately planned her pregnancy AFTER she’d restarted, knowing full well what was required of her in regard to the exam. She’s already failed the test once. She keeps demanding more and more concessions, but seems unwilling to make any kind of compromise. This isn’t a hardluck story of a hapless breastfeeding mommy caught in an unfair system; this is a whiny, self-centered, arrogant entitlement whore who just keeps coming up with excuses as to why she’s more “special” than everybody else.

    And QLH, your friend is right…Currier is expecting the rest of the world to bend over backwards to accommodate her own poor decision-making. She had two babies in two years – not exactly the smartest thing to do when you’re in a demanding double-degree program. She knew damn well what the exam required, but decided that the rules shouldn’t have to apply to her. There’s an old saying – we can have it all, we just can’t have it all at once. If a woman can juggle kids and career simultaneously – and many do – more power to her. But if she has to demand special treatment in order to do it, then she needs to take a hard look at her own planning skills rather than stomping her feet and running off to whine to the courts about how unfair life is. Someone on another board told me that being a feminist means I should support another woman’s choice. My reply was that I don’t have to support a stupid or irresponsible choice. Supporting every dumbass “choice” a woman just because she’s a woman makes isn’t feminism, it’s a herd mentality.

  10. Yes, I am not sure, given all the accommodations this woman has been given, and all the failure she has had in the past, and that the exam is offered many times throughout the year, that this woman is a huge victory for women in general. I do wonder how she plans to get through her residency if she can’t go 4.5 hours without taking hour long breaks for pumping. I am not a doctor, but at my job, we can’t take super long breaks because it will negatively affect our co-workers. From what I understand (ok, from six seasons of Scrubs) residency is difficult, time consuming, and probably fairly impossible to do with a nursing baby.

  11. “octogalore – did you ever work and pump?”

    Yes.

    “I needed 3-4 breaks in an 8-9 hour day. I pumped right before work. Then 2 hours into work, then over lunch I usually pumped twice, then 2 hours after lunch and then right after work. Anything less and I got plugged ducts (the precursor to mastitis).”

    Yes, but she could’ve pumped before and after, so even with breaks every three hours, that’s two breaks.

    I had a preemie and she ate every three hours (as you know, as a child’s weight goes up she can go longer between meals). I think most medical professionals recommend pumping every three hours. And for people who pump every two, going an extra hour for one or two days between pumps isn’t going to be disasterous. I extended an extra hour here and there for work without problems, and in my mommy and me groups, I don’t think anyone ever mentioned needing to pump every two or else there’d be medical comlications.

  12. Currier is expecting the rest of the world to bend over backwards to accommodate her own poor decision-making. She had two babies in two years – not exactly the smartest thing to do when you’re in a demanding double-degree program.

    No one would ever criticize a man for making the same “poor decisions.” And not all pregnancies are planned: just because she’s planning to be a doctor, does that mean we get to control her fertility? I think she’s done pretty well for herself, if she’s managed to get this far with the demands of motherhood, ADHD, and dyslexia.

  13. Some babies can go longer between meal, some can’t. My perfectly healthy, extremely large baby needed/wanted to eat every 2 hours until he was 6 months old and getting solid foods.

    You went to Mommy and Me groups? Then you must be the expert.

    I went to LLL groups and this was a common concern/complaint. Plugged ducts are extremely common and the leading cause is allowing yourself to become engorged. Which for those of us with babies who ate every 2-3 hours happened, not surprisingly, every 2-3 hours. Since pumping never drains the breast as well as nursing (at least for those of us who don’t pump exclusively) plugged ducts are more common and pumping needs to happen MORE often than nursing (either that or wean yourself from pumping totally and give formula during those times – which a lot of women do and is a valid option, just not for me and I don’t think for anyone for ONE day).

    Maybe the difference between Mommy and Me and LLL is that LLL is set up to specifically discuss nursing and, by extension, pumping issues. So it came up there pretty much every meeting.

    It is unfortunate that this issue is being raised by a woman who has already asked for, and received, other accomodations, because it allows people to ignore the greater issue and focus instead on her “greediness”. We, as a society, do not value nursing babies and, by extension, their mothers. As far as a lot of people are concerned, formula exists and therefore should be used if there are any roadblocks to nursing – nevermind that a few simple accomodations could make nursing MUCH easier than formula.

  14. Well, gaia, something tells me that if she had a doctor establish that her baby was indeed eating every two hours, and maybe she did, it wouldn’t be a problem to get breaks according to that schedule.

    That said, two hours is pretty unusual as babies go, esp for a large baby. While YMMV, most moms I know who feed every two hours are responding to signals other than hunger.

    But the bottom line is, “breast is best” gets a lot of respect these days, and if there were backup from her pedi as to her nursing schedule, I daresay that appropriate breaks would be accorded.

  15. “It strikes me that an additional hour is much more than would be needed, in addition to the 45-min of break time, to pump milk. It takes 15 minutes to do that, 20 including setup. With nine hours, she’d need two breaks. Am I missing something here?”

    Eating? Going to the toilet? Variations between women in pump response?

    Colour me also as gobsmacked that commenters on a feminist blog are whining that:

    (a) this woman should have made a choice between career and reproduction, just because other women are cornered into that choice by a misogynist society,

    and (b) only women without disability accessibility needs should have access to workplace pumping accommodations. To deny pumping accommodations _on the basis of disability accommodations being already in place_ is outright bigotry.

    If a medical career is incompatible with breastfeeding bodies, the problem is with medicine, not with women. I for one am very glad that this particular woman is challenging that broken outlook.

    And the school whining that they don’t have the staff or resources to supervise an hour of pumping breaks, but they can go to court several times over it? Uh, right. Whatever.

  16. “It strikes me that an additional hour is much more than would be needed, in addition to the 45-min of break time, to pump milk. It takes 15 minutes to do that, 20 including setup. With nine hours, she’d need two breaks. Am I missing something here?”

    Eating? Going to the toilet? Variations between women in pump response?

    Colour me also as gobsmacked that commenters on a feminist blog are whining that:

    (a) this woman should have made a choice between career and reproduction, just because other women are cornered into that choice by a misogynist society,

    and (b) only women without disability accessibility needs should have access to workplace pumping accommodations. To deny pumping accommodations _on the basis of disability accommodations being already in place_ is outright bigotry.

    If a medical career is incompatible with breastfeeding bodies, the problem is with medicine, not with women. I for one am very glad that this particular woman is challenging that broken outlook.

    And the board whining that they don’t have the staff or resources to supervise an hour of pumping breaks, but they can go to court several times over it? Uh, right. Whatever.

  18. With an additional half hour, so a total of 75 minutes, you’d have three breaks of 25 minutes each. Assuming a helper for pump setup and cleanup and a few minutes each time for the toilet, hard to imagine that not being ample. Most tests allow energy bars and snacks during the test. There are plenty of healthy protein-filled bars suitable as meal replacement for pregnant women.

    These kinds of marathon tests are not supposed to be fun. Having taken a number of them, and as someone with a bad bladder, it’s a marathon, not a day at the beach. Making accomodations for pregnancy and breastfeeding is reasonable, but creating an unfair playing field with the other toiling kids isn’t. People make sacrifices to take these exams. A friend of mine with a worse bladder than mine who had a pot of coffee before the Bar exam actually wore, and used, a Depends during the exam.

    (Yes, it actually was “a friend” and not me — I was single when I took the Bar and much too concerned about how my ass looked to try a diaper.)

  19. A helper for the pumped milk? I’m assuming that would be someone she brought with her, because I can tell you right now, there is no way in hell you’re going to have a normal every day lay person willing to step in to help set up and clean up the pump and take care of the pumped milk.

    People in my office FREAKED that I might use the refrigerator at work to hold the bottles of EBM that were IN a bag. They freaked out that I used the BATHROOM sink to rinse out the pump parts. The local daycares ALL refused to take EBM. It’s a bodily fluid, doncha know.

    You know, you’re really not an expert on breastfeeding and feeding schedules. Neither am I, but I’d put my multiple years of breastfeeding and LLL attendance up against your experience and Mommy and Me classes. Some babies do have a physical need to feed every 2 hours or so. I wouldn’t have gone to my pedi for a written report of that because 1) I rarely went to the pedi and 2) my pedi was pretty ignorant about feeding babies in general (he recommended cereal at 8 weeks and suggested I should go ahead and wean to formula at 10 weeks, mainly because when he asked about feeding schedule I said “every couple of hours or so”).

  20. Apparently they were able to let her pump milk and take the test in a separate room, which she already got due to adhd. She could have also brought in food and drinks to be consumed at any time and the timing of the breaks is flexible.

    Link 1

    Link 2

  21. No, Dr. Confused, not all babies are planned. This one, however, was. And as much as you wring your hands about “controlling a woman’s fertility”, at some point in time we have to expect women to make rational decisions about when to have kids, especially when it puts them on a collision course with an extremely demanding career AND when they demand special treatment because they’re “mommies”. Is it smart to have two kids still in diapers, one of whom isn’t weaned, when you’re setting out on a career path that involves 80-hour weeks, especially when you have a double-barreled learning disability that makes you so easily distracted you can’t even take your own notes in class, you have to have someone else do it for you? I’d say no.

    No one would ever criticize a man for making the same “poor decisions.”

    Unfortunately men don’t get pregnant, men don’t breastfeed, and men don’t demand that everyone else bend over backwards to make their lives easier because they have a baby. (And actually, if a man pulled the same “gimme-gimme” nonsense that Currier is pulling, I damn well would criticize.) Let me ask you this: would you be as supportive of Currier’s demands if she weren’t playing the “sacred mommyhood” card? If, for example, she claimed she needed the extra break time (on top of what she already gets) to prevent test-induced panic attacks? Or to meditate or pray, because her religion commands it? Or because marathon test-taking is just so exhausting that she needs extra break time to recover? At what point in time do we say to women like this, “Enough. Life isn’t fair. Put on your big-girl panties and deal, because you’re making the rest of us look bad”? Lots of other breastfeeding women have taken the boards and done just fine with the time allotted; for Currier to demand one accommodation on top of another and then use her baby as a bargaining chip is a slap in the face to all those women who have worked so hard to make it without special help.

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