Pump your breast milk in the bathroom." That's what one local mother was told when she returned to work from maternity leave. "It was a bathroom!" she said. "I don't eat my lunch in there. I wouldn't expect anyone to eat or prepare their lunch in there, and I wasn't going to do my daughter's meals in there."

There are no statistics on the number of local offices that have special lactating rooms for mothers, La Leche League's Bermuda chapter this year sought to raise awareness of the plight of working nursing mothers during World Breastfeeding Week. Breastfeeding week actually ends today.

A spokesman for the League said she guessed there is a significant fall in the numbers of women who continue to breast-feed after they return to work. There are no local stats.

The mother who was told to express her milk in the bathroom said she worked in a government office that was predominantly male. And she said she received little sympathy for her situation on the job.

"I would pump at my desk as discreetly as I could," she said. "But it got bad. My nipples would leak onto my clothes. Finally my immediate manager took me aside and said I could use his office when I needed."

But the mother, who fears repercussions if named, said that arrangement was not reliable. Many times when she needed to express milk, the boss was in a meeting or his office was otherwise occupied.

After weeks of conflict she opted to go home every time she needed to pump milk ¿ at least twice a day. "Luckily I lived close by," she said. "My body has now acclimatized to my daughter's feeding times, but this took a good year," she said.

A major benefit of breast milk is the immunity it provides babies.

This mother had a high-risk pregnancy and her daughter was born with a rare congenital defect. "The doctors advised me to give her breast milk to help bolster her immunity and I wanted to give my daughter the best chance for best health," she said.

Stress slows milk production and this was a problem the mother suffered when first back at work.

"I would send four ounces to the nursery and that's all for the eight hours she was there," the mother said. "On average babies drink about six ounces every two or three hours so my daughter was clearly not getting enough. It got the point where I would pick her up at 4 p.m. and she would nurse straight through to 7 a.m. I woke up tired and dehydrated because she was on me all night," she added.

Once the mother began going home to express her milk her production rose. "I would put on some music and relax while I pumped," she said. But the option to slip home twice a day was not ideal. "I did this in lieu of lunch so I was often missing my lunch because I lost time in having to walk to and from the car park," she said. As a result she had to enlist the help of an overseas lactation consultant who advised her to take certain supplements.

Despite the hardship at work she said she had to stay. "Financially it is not an option for me to stay home," she said. "We have to go back and forth to children's hospital every six months. I need to work to keep the insurance."

Grateful that she was able to work she felt strongly that her employer should have been more accommodating.

"What irritated me the most is that wherever I turned, I met up with 'we cannot deal with this right now we are dealing with other issues'," she said.

She said another woman who applied to work in the department was told to reapply after she had finished breastfeeding because breastfeeding could not be accommodated on the job.

It's three years later but the mother said no improvements have been made. "Now other mothers on the job come to me for assistance and we band together for support," she said. The women use each other's offices as make shift lactating rooms. "The view of the employer here is: you have three months maternity leave, get it over and done with before you come back to work. Don't breastfeed on our time."

While she was able to come to an agreeable solution with her manager, the mother said it should be every mother's right. The World Health Organisation recommends that mothers feed their babies solely on breast milk - no other fluids including water, and no solids, for at least six months. "Bermuda is so far behind," she said. A recent Government survey supports her view. Government's Breastfeeding Promotion Committee found that while a high percentage of local mothers began breastfeeding their babies (94 percent) by six months less than one percent had continued.

The main reasons mothers had stopped included concerns about milk supply (37 percent), work commitments (26 percent) and the perception that baby "weaned" him or herself (24 percent).

As a result of the findings the committee intend to produce breast feeding guidelines and education and have it included in workplace policies.