Lactation Rooms - Regularly occupied?

Hi Erica. We are working on a project that has a lactation room. We haven´t sent to review yet, but our consensus was consider this space as regularly occupied once easily someone can spend more than one hour breast feeding, depends on the mood of the baby. :) Privacy can be an issue, but also can be sorted out without losing views. Well, that´s my opinion. Hope that helps!

The latest version of the Regularly Occupied Space Matrix notes that exam rooms, nurseries, diagnostic/treatment rooms, autopsy/morgue, and waiting rooms as being considered regularly occupied. So a lactation room would fall into a regularly occupied space definition. A case for the space not being occupied for more than an hour at a time by a nursing mother could be made. However, as stated by Johanna, a baby make nurse for a few minutes or a long time. I would assume that a space with that activity would not be that big, so it should not hurt your calculations.

Why are we assuming that the baby is with the mother? Often lactation rooms are for nursing mother to pump while at work and the baby is in daycare. Pumping takes less time. You may be able to study the use more carefully to determine if the room is regularly occupied. That said, I would vote for a room with some sort of daylighting.

Is the room part of a hospital or health care facility? Or is it part of a commercial office space? If it is part of a health care facility, it might be hard to argue that it is used less than one hour per person per day on average. (It is an average, not a maximum.) If it is in a commercial office space, I would expect it to be used less than an hour on average. And, given that a woman’s only other option for this activity if this room is not provided would be a restroom, I would align it with such under this credit. The Space Type matrix says that restrooms can be excluded from this credit. As always, state your case directly and clearly in the credit narrative. Hopefully this small area won't push the scale from 90 to 89% and you won't have to worry about it.

Hi Erica, I am curious what the result was for the lactation room. Did you end up counting it as occupied or not? If not, was that accepted?