- November 28, 2024
-
-
Loading
Loading
New mothers who work at Flagler Palm Coast High School will now have an easier time breast-feeding.
The school has purchased a hospital-grade breast pump, refrigerator, desk, chair and filing cabinet through a grant from the Florida Department of Health’s Healthy Communities, Healthy People program.
FPC received the Gold Level Breastfeeding Friendly Employer Award from the Florida Breastfeeding Coalition for the lactation room, which the school created for their teachers who are breast-feeding.
FPC is the first school in the state to receive this award.
“The whole purpose of the grant was to empower the working woman in the workforce, but I look at it as a benefit to the students, too, because their job is attending school,” said Susan Warner, teacher at FPC.
The students she is talking about are the 15 students in the teenage parenting program that Warner teaches.
The program is offered as an elective for expecting teens and teen moms.
In the class, students learn about prenatal and postnatal care, how to take care of their babies, when to feed them solid foods, and positive discipline.
“There is controversy out there in regards to having classes like this,” Warner admits. “If they are pregnant, they need all the education they can get — this is a dropout prevention program — if they are going to graduate, they need a place to also parent.”
Warner hopes that the lactation room will not only provide teachers a comfortable, relaxed, private room to feed, but will also aid her in teaching her students about the importance of breast-feeding.
Warner is especially interested in the issue because she was a teen parent herself.
“I was never given the option of breast-feeding,” Warner said. “Looking back, I wish someone had informed me and let me make my own choice.”
