Restaurant Decals Back Breast-Feeding

If Michelle Oetting has her way, Valley restaurants will prominently display a “Breastfeeding Welcome Here” decal.

Oetting launched a campaign to distribute the decals as part of her work as a clinic supervisor for the Northeast Valley Health Corp.’s Women, Infants and Children nutrition program.

By placing the decals, Oetting seeks to alleviate tensions that arise when mothers nurse babies in public--an act that often is “just looked at sexually and not as a biological function,” Oetting said.

A state law that allows mothers to breast-feed in any public place took effect in January, Oetting said.

But abiding by the law and encouraging women to breast-feed are two different things.

To date, in conjunction with national Breast-Feeding Awareness Month, Oetting has persuaded eight restaurant owners and managers to display the decal, a sticker designed in 1994 by the Breast-Feeding Task Force of Greater Los Angeles. She said other restaurants resisted.

The reason for her campaign and the law is simple, Oetting said. “A mother needs to breast-feed frequently to maintain an adequate supply of milk.”

In California, 74% of mothers choose to breast-feed at the time of hospital discharge, but only 17% breast-feed exclusively nine weeks after giving birth, according to the state Department of Health Services.

The Women, Infants and Children nutrition program teaches a free series of three breast-feeding classes for low-income women at 10 of its clinics across the Valley. The first class is an introduction to breast-feeding, the second a class on positioning the baby and the third a course that enables new mothers who breast-feed to air any concerns and seek further advice.

For more information about the decal, call (818) 997-7491. For information on the classes, call (818) 361-7541.