Breastfeeding breaks in Luxembourg

Women who breastfeed their children in Luxembourg are entitled to reduce their working hours by taking breastfeeding breaks or pause d’allaitement. Read below to find out more about how this works, and my personal take on this topic.

Breastfeeding breaks: a right for every breastfeeding mother

In Luxembourg, every woman that breastfeeds their child has the right to reduce their working hours by taking the so called “breastfeding breaks” or “temps d’allaitement”. This might be shocking to some, and some might even say think it is unfair or unnecessary. But when looking at the numbers, breastfeeding for a year takes approximately 1800 hours. A full-time job with three weeks of vacations is 1960 hours a year. Evidently, breastfeeding demands as much time as a full time job. Hence it makes only sense that, when a breastfeeding mother wants to go back to her professional activity, she can do with some extra support.

Even though it might seem as if this right benefits only the mother and her child, it actually benefits the employer and the society as a whole! Since breastfed babies get sick less often, their mothers will lose less days of work, and less money will have to be spent by the social security on doctors visits and other things of the sort. Undeniably, breastfeeding breaks ought to be seen as an investment and not an expense.

What the official regulation says

Now let us have a look at what these breastfeeding breaks consist of. We can read at guichet.lu that:

Women who are breastfeeding their child are also entitled, upon request, to two 45-minute breastfeeding breaks per workday:

• one at the beginning of the workday; and
• one at the end of the workday.

The two 45-minute periods can be combined into a single breastfeeding break of 90 minutes:

• provided the working day is interrupted by a one-hour break only; or
• if it is impossible for the mother to breastfeed the child near her workplace.

Breastfeeding time(s) must be counted as ordinary working hours.

The “small print”, or how this really works

There are two very important points that might not be so evident:

• The breastfeeding hours are not reimbursed or covered in any way. Unlike the maternity or parental leaves, the employer still pays your salary for those hours.
• There is no age limit for taking the breastfeeding breaks. As long as you breastfeed and you can provide a doctor’s note to certify it, you have the right to take them.

The caveat here is that some employers might not be thrilled with you taking this leave. Many employers fail to see the **big picture**, the long term benefits we were discussing above. Thus they see simply and employee missing hours of work, and they might try to prevent this from happening.

Don’t get me wrong, you have the right to take those breaks. But the guidelines are a bit ambiguous, and I’ve heard of employers forcing their employees to stay in the office and pump during that 1:30h instead of letting them go home early or come later. These are, luckily, rare exceptions, and most employers abide the regulation and let their employees go home early. In doing so, they are supporting working mothers and making their parenting journey a bit easier. In addition they are inadvertently harvesting other benefits for their company and the society as a whole.

Some personal thoughts about taking the breastfeeding breaks

To finalize, I would like to share a bit of my own personal experience. First, in respect to whether taking the breaks or not taking them. I absolutely know that sometimes we might feel a lot of pressure on ourselves, and we might feel that taking the breastfeeding breaks might make us look bad, specially with respect with our male coworkers. It took me a lot of reflection and thought to decide to take mine.

As you might know, I work as a researcher in the University, on a highly male dominated field. I spent a lot of time wondering whether I should take the breastfeeding breaks, or if doing so would play against me and be a prejudice to my career. In the end, however, I ended up figuring out that my time with my child was priceless. That the possibility of spending extra time with him, and to have this extra boost of help to keep our breastfeeding journey going, was to me more valuable than the opinion of my boss or my coworkers.

This is something very personal and no one can make this decision for you, and it might vary a lot depending on your field and other circumstances. In my case, I decided that academia was ungrateful enough and I had already given it a lot over the past decade. So I drew a line there and decided to take the breastfeeding breaks. Which was, for me, the right decision. I also thought that, by taking this leave, I was setting a precedent and making the road a bit smoothers for those who came after me. I believe that if most women took the breastfeeding breaks, it would eventually become the norm. Women who breastfeed would be expected to work 6.5h a day, and that’s it.

Final remarks: when breastfeeding does not work out

As a final note, I would like to comment on the cases in which women do not breastfeed. Particularly, cases of women that *wanted* to breastfeed, but couldn’t. As you might know, I was one of those with my first son. And I understand that it can feel unfair and terribly painful to think that not only you did not succeed to breastfeed, but you do not have the right to spend extra time with your kid because of that. Believe me, I feel you.

But there is one thing to keep in mind: the guidelines do not require you to be *exclusively breastfeeding*. You could be combo feeding or triple feeding and still benefit from the breastfeeding breaks! Triple feeding is exhausting and I, having a very low supply and a baby who did not latch properly, stopped at around 5 months old. The lack of support was of course the main reason, but also the tiredness. When I think about it, I believe that if I had had the incentive of having these breaks, I would probably continued breastfeeding. And that would have had great consequences for my child, because as you know, every drop counts!

But I didn’t have that opportunity back then. And I was exhausting, and working full time. So I stopped. And it is ok: it is part of the road that brought me here today.

Which, partially, is one of the reasons why I tell you: if you are in Luxembourg, and you have this possibility, consider taking the breastfeeding breaks. The society as a whole will benefit from it.

Sources: guichet.lu , La Leche League