Comments  1

• Heather Coles 8/12/2010 12:00:00 AM

  Looking for a Mutually Beneficial Solution



  I first want to let you know how beneficial a program Woodstock is for the homeless women and children of the city.

  I try my best to utilize all of the services here for me. I especially like the Bright Spaces. The staff there treat me with respect, dignity and seem to have my best interests at heart. I am learning how to discipline and teach my children as well as be a role model. I no longer smoke cigarettes, use foul language, and even limit what I watch on television around my children. I can truly say I'm growing.

  I have been here for about one year and three weeks. For most of my stay I was pregnant and I now have a four-month old baby boy. There were six babies born to Woodstock in the month of March this year. With the coaching of the Coordinator of Educational Services (Ms. Portia) and her assistant (Ms. Delseta), I decided to breastfeed my baby. I suffer with depression issues and I also have PTSD. I was told by my doctors at Temple that breastfeeding is the best for my baby and there is less chance of Post-Partum Depression when the mother nurses her newborn baby. Myself, my case manager, my OB doctor and my psychiatrist collectively agreed that nursing my son was worth a try. I stopped taking my psychotropic medication and assured my support system that I will notify everyone if I feel that I need intervention. I am in individual therapy and also participate in the TREM group therapy. I'm doing well and am proud of myself for not having medicine for eight months.

  I am now ready to move on to bigger and better. I have set and met most of my goals and am currently working on finishing my degree in Graphic Design. This is a lifelong dream and when I achieve my ultimate goal of working for Pixar, homelessness will be a distant memory for my family. I am asking for your help in coming up with a solution for storing my milk safely so that my child can go to daycare while I am at school.

  When my son was born there where four of the six new mothers breastfeeding at the shelter. I explained to The Coordinator of Professional Services (Mr. Richard Glover), that there is a need for more refrigerator space to store breast milk. After three weeks lack of space, two mothers decided to give up and feed their babies formula. I asked them why and was told that there was no room, or the milk was misplaced. There were instances when I was given the wrong bottle. This is not quality service. I now have a small, designated space inside the medication refrigerator to store my milk. The unit is as tall as the average coffee table. One could imagine how hard it is to freeze enough milk to carry over to the next couple of days. I constantly have to compete with the staff for space.

  I complained a lot to the Coordinator of Residential Services about there being food stored in the medication refrigerator and the fact that my milk was going sour. There was even a time when a staff member took four bottles of milk out of the freezer and put a Mountian Dew in its place. Since March 21 of this year I have thrown away 32 bottles of breast milk. That comes to about 1.5 per week. That is literally hours of hard work and it makes me cry every time I have to throw a bottle away. How can a family be treated with such disrespect?

  Eventually I went to the Director of Woodstock and expressed my dismay and there was a note placed on the refrigerator reiterating that there is to be no food or drinks besides breast milk placed in the medication refrigerator. The sign was continually ignored and the problem persisted. I guess I must have complained too much because now there is a sign on the refrigerator that states the same but is also noted that the residents may NOT go into the room where the med fridge is at all. This now keeps me from having anything to do with the way my milk is stored and distributed. To me, this is a narrow-minded solution to a heart-wrenching problem.

  As a solution I creatively thought that perhaps the breastfeeding mothers could purchase small individual refrigerators. They would be used solely as a safe and secure place to store milk. It could be monitored daily with the room check. This would alleviate all tension between residents and staff. And I would feel empowered to know that I have one less thing to worry about. I am an active member of the Woodstock community and am an avid member of the Woodstock Policy Council. I would love to make this a front-page story in our One Step Away newspaper about how RHD promotes and values the healthy growth and development of the babies here at Woodstock.

   

  Thank You, Heather Coles WFC