Lactation Room

The Center for Diversity and Inclusion provides a lactation room at the top of the stairs on the second floor of the Hamar House (Building 13). This space is designed for those who would like a private space to breast feed or use a breast pump.

View a map of other lactation or baby changing spaces on campus.

From Bedroom to Lactation Room

Gretchen Hamar Healy, who lived with her family in the Hamar House, read with interest about the lactation room for nursing mothers on the second floor.

That was the house my father, then president of the Hamar Quandt Company (now 41 Lumber) built around 1941, when I was six years old. It was a "showcase" house for the Hamar Quandt Company and had special features including a clothes chute and dust chute that dropped its contents from my bedroom on the second floor to containers in the basement. In the closet of that bedroom are (were?) elastic strips where I kept my hair ribbons and pencil marks on the wall showing my yearly growth.

I assume the lactation room is in the bedroom with the bathroom, my parents' bedroom. It faced College Avenue, which was then also US 41, and also a neighborhood street with lovely houses on both sides.

In 1964, the La Leche League, a national support group for breastfeeding mothers, was started as a combined Minneapolis/St. Paul group. It grew so quickly, we split into two groups, one for each city. I became the St. Paul leader—thus my special interest in a lactation room in my old house.