• Upper Breast Side

  220 West 71st Street, Suite 1; 212-873-2653

  It’s not just that Felina Rakowski-Gallagher stocks every possible kind of nursing gear, from bras to books. No, this Upper West Sider (and former NYPD beat cop) provides something seriously missing to new moms: information. The business grew out of her own crisis when her first child was born. “It was me and Enfamil unless I got some help quickly.” (When she picked up a breast pump at the drugstore, the sum total of her pharmacist’s coaching was “Read the instruction manual.”) At Rakowski-Gallagher’s shop, no buyer goes home without extensive coaching, and that’s after choosing from nine brands and 22 styles of nursing bras, as well as eight models of pumps for purchase and five to rent, each with a try-before-you-buy emphasis. Rakowski-Gallagher even stocks a Swedish line of clothing (called Boob) that pretty much ends the struggle with snaps and straps (there’s a velvet-piped black gown with a slit in the bodice). She also encourages men to tag along—she teaches them how to put the pumps together. “They like it,” laughs Rakowski-Gallagher. “It’s like a power tool.”

From the 2004 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine