Oh mon dieu! That’s 500 ounces of liquid gold!
Any mom who pumps breastmilk will understand the effort and dedication that must have gone into pumping and storing 500 whopping ounces of breastmilk. Which is why Jessica Coakley Martinez was so upset when airport security seized her hard-earned milk at Heathrow, London.
“You made me dump nearly 500 oz of breastmilk in the trash. You made me dump out nearly two weeks worth of food for my son”, lamented a very upset Jessica in an open letter she wrote to Heathrow aviation security via Facebook.
This case is coming closely after American actress, Alyssa Milano, had a twitter meltdown over her 10 ounces of breastmilk which was confiscated at the same Heathrow airport. Alyssa’s case pales in comparison to Jessica’s; but still, any amount of breastmilk is too precious to be tossed in the bin.
The thing is that the airport policy limits travellers to 100ml (3.4 oz) of liquid on board a flight; but this rule is flexible for milk only if a mom is travelling with her baby. “I acknowledge my part in this equation. I should have looked up the Civil Aviation rule.” admitted Jessica, who was on a work trip, and had gone through great lengths to get that quantity of breast milk by pumping at every opportunity: in between meetings, presentations, conferences, even in public restrooms. She had made it through airports of four other countries, except Heathrow. She still insists that the rule is unfair and exclusionary to working breastfeeding moms, who had to travel from time to time.
She wasn’t totally ignorant about the rules of travelling with liquid, because she had frozen 300 oz of the breastmilk into a rock-hard solid, and thought it would be considered legal, but the officials were adamant. Like a mother clinging onto her baby’s precious meal, she tried different solutions all to no avail. The breast milk was labelled as a non-compliant item and confiscated.
“Despite my begging, pleading and even crying out of sheer shock and desperation for a solution (which you essentially scoffed at with annoyance), you treated me as if I was trying to smuggle liters of hydrogen peroxide onto the plane. There was no room for discussion; “it’s the law.””
I guess with Heathrow airport, there’s no need crying over spilt breastmilk. If you have to carry more than 100ml of breastmilk with you on the plane, your baby better be travelling with you. The law is the law. But why would you have to carry more than 100ml of breastmilk if your baby is right there with you?
