Truth Staff

Elkhart General Hospital will be providing a private area for breastfeeding mothers during the Elkhart County 4-H Fair. The “mother’s room,” will be a closed-off area where women can nurse comfortably. There will be stuffed animals for older children and rocking chairs as well as lactation consultants on hand.

“They’d normally have to go into a bathroom stall,” EGH Media and Special Events Coordinator Shelley Rody said. “This is a little nicer than that.”

This is the second consecutive year that the hospital has had a lactation area. This year it’ll be slightly bigger, and it will be there every day of the fair.

Rody said that they got the idea from the Indiana State Fair, where there was an area devoted to breastfeeding mothers. The room will be located within the health and lifestyle tent in between the grandstand and the rides. Several hundred women used the room during last year’s county fair.

Lactation consultants Janet Kercher and Linda Lyon will be running the lactation area. Kercher said that the state fair has had a lactation area for years. It helps promote breastfeeding as a healthy option for mothers and their babies.

“They loved being able to have a place to not just breastfeed their babies, but as a way to escape with their babies,” Kercher said of the response they got from the mothers.