Monday, February 25, 2008

Breastfeeding battles

Last week I saw a news report about a mother of a breastfeeding infant who took an issue with how she was treated at a restaurant when she needed to breastfeed. My first reaction was, oh how dare they, blah, blah, blah!! But then I really listened to what happened and I changed my opinion about how the restaurant treated her. Take a look:
http://www.myfoxboston.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail;jsessionid=E8AC1EF6D886C9989B09CD729B23E89F?contentId=5837337&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=1.1.1&sflg=1
Now think about it a little. What do you think? What should the restaurant be required to do for her in this case? Anything? There's no doubt that their hospitality toward this woman was severely lacking, but is that a crime? Did they tell her not to breastfeed? No. I know there is a breastfeeding bill in the works for Massachusetts to protect breastfeeding moms in public, but I assume that does not mean that every business needs to provide a private place to breastfeed, just allow women to do it in public, which this restaurant did!

5 comments:

Susan Z said...

I have to admit that I am one of those brazen mothers who just does it in public. Of course after having and then breastfeeding twins you loose a lot of your inhibitions.
Oh, and welcome to the blogging world. =)

Jill in MA said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jill in MA said...

was one of those brazen moms, too. But honestly, once the kid is latched on, there's not much to see! And once you get the hang of it, latching on can be relatively discreet....

Susan Z said...

This story reminded me of one I heard when I had just had the twins. It reminds me of how important it is to find out all of the details. The story I am remembering was about a woman arrested for breastfeeding in her car. My first thought was, That is a semi-private place. Later I heard another report on the story and this time it included the fact that the woman was driving and breastfeeding...hmmmm, how could they leave that detail out in the first report.

Ann in NJ said...

Welcome to the blogging world!
I'm agreeing with you, Jill, it sounds almost like this woman was looking for a fight. I can understand how she might want to have her other kids eat while she was feeding the baby in the closed room, but sorry, the restaurant does NOT have to open a closed area just because you're breastfeeding.