How does your daycare treat breastmilk?

Yesterday our daycare gave a note to all parents of the infant room about their new breastmilk policy. Apaprently after doing some research on the AAP site, they know decided to protect themselves against possible infection from exposure to breastmilk... Here are their rules:

1. All breastmilk bottles have to be clearly labled breastmilk.
2. All bottles have to be ready to warm and eat out of the fridge. (so no disk inserts so they staff doesn't have to risk exposure by having to remove them first)
3. The staff will be advised (but not required) to wear gloves while feeding expressed breastmilk to infants.

I was irate!!!!!!!! Now, I am by no means a so-called 'breastfeeding nazi'. My DD is fed Alimentum for multiple reasons, and my DS gets the breastmilk. I have thought many times that it would be easier to just feed them both formula, especially since I'm back at work 4 days a week. But since I am still producing milk, I can't bring myself to stop pumping and breastfeeding for my DS.

And now the daycare is treating it like it's some toxic substance!! Am I overreacting? My husband just sighed and said it will be more work for him to take the disk inserts out every morning when he drops them off. But when I walk in there and see someone wearing gloves while they feed my baby my breastmilk, I may just explode.

 

Gloves?! Oh, for crying out loud. Yeah, I'm sure the antibodies in your milk present a huge risk of contagious disease. :faint:

I've been a SAHM, so I'm pretty clueless about what's standard with daycare - I'll be very curious to read what other places do!

 

Wow, I think the gloves are a bit much. Heaven forbid a baby spits up...the gloves might not help then.

I can completely understand the labeling part, and our daycare did require that the milk was brought in already in the bottle, but they let me bring extra just in case they needed it. They were very flexible.

As for the disks, can you skip those and just use a lid? That would be a pain to have to remove them once you get to the daycare.

 

That's annoying :grr: Can you use the bottles with the nipple/lid instead of the discs? I hated taking the discs places b/c they always got lost!

The gloves are definitely overkill!

 

Good point! And do they put on gloves for every single diaper change too? Jeez Louise.

 

oh brother! so sorry for the hassle, the gloves do seem a bit much!

 

My oldest DS's daycare was like that and it made my blood boil also. He is 8 now so this was a long time ago, but they had this attitude like bm was toxic and I never understood it. There were several teachers in the classroom that wore gloves when feeding the b'fed babies, but not all did. They commented numerous times to me that my son had diarrhea when in fact it was typical b'fed baby yellow mustard poops. They also had something to say about how his bottles were smaller than they should be (b/c they were never, ever 8 oz!!). Thankfully, I had done my research and had strong opinions about what I wanted for my child, but my hormones kicked in more than once and I'd be crying on the way home b/c of these comments/attitudes towards breastmilk.

Turns out, I ended up pulling my son from this place just after he turned one b/c I wasn't any happier with the "toddler" room...

I feel your pain and all I can say is stick to your guns, follow their policies re the bottles being prepared, and try not to give them too much attitude back when you walk in and they are feeding your baby while wearing gloves!! I think I was guilty of this once or twice...

 

Well, I'm very pro-bfing... I've done it to some extent for all of my kids and was able to ebf three of my kids. But in defense of the daycares... bm is a fluid that comes from your body, and it can pass on diseases such as HIV. If a nurse put on gloves to handle your blood you wouldn't be offended. So while it seems offensive to wear gloves for a substance that conveys such sacrifice and love on the part of a mother for her child, it is understandable. No matter how nice a person looks you can't know just by looking at them what kind of communicable diseases they might have. Yeah, the risk of exposure is pretty darn small, but what if they had the small chance of dealing with a mother who looked like she might be sick/on drugs while still passing on bm for her child at day care. Then they should have a CYA policy on handling bm. Stranger things have happened. I wouldn't be overly offended. In fact, given the exposure to germs coming the other direction I think I would be very happy to know that my day care workers were NOT putting their hands in the bm and were covering their hands with gloves while feeding my child...heck, what if the day care worker has a cut on their hand...wouldn't it be nice to know it's covered with a glove??? I wouldn't take offense over these issues.

Now the comments on the poop and the amount of the bottle might tick me off.

 

Yes, you are overreacting. It's not reasonable to expect that daycare workers should have to be exposed to another adult's bodily fluids. I was never offended when the NICU nurses used gloves--in fact, I would expect that's how they would treat bodily fluids to protect all the children, including mine. And yes, in many places they do use gloves for diaper changes too.

 

Gee, thanks. I wasn't expecting anyway to actually say that. That made me laugh. I have calmed down about it a bit, and we did switch to bottles that don't leak because the cap presses on the top of the nipple.

And yes, they do wear gloves with every diaper change.

I think part of my anger was because I felt like it was targeted directly at my family. We have only been there for a few weeks and suddenly they have this new policy about breastmilk and disk inserts in the bottles... And I've wanted to stop pumping so many times but I've just keep at it and then this happened. I totally understand about it being a body fluid though. But seriously, what if they feed him a bottle of breastmilk and then he throws it up on them? They don't wear aprons or anything.

I'm still sending breastmilk for Athan and if they want to wear gloves, go for it.

 

At our NICU, the nurses DID wear aprons or coverups when feeding bm.

I certainly hope they weren't targeting your family, but of course I have no way of knowing. But, if you run a daycare for infants, you should know that a lot of infants eat bm! It shouldn't come as a surprise that some moms want to send in bm for their babies!

 

Good for you! And if your little one pukes all over them then good for him! LOL. They should wear aprons simply to save their clothes anyway!! And honestly, the glove thing should make you feel better...look at it as them protecting your babies from THEIR germs and not the other way around.