WeSnLaNi

I love nursing Lani and have never had anyone say anything to me while nursing in public! I feel lucky because I know that people have said very ignorant and embarrasing things to some of my friends! There are not too many public places that I go to that offer a seperate place for nursing and I refuse to feed her in the bathroom. I certianly would never eat a meal in a nasty public restroom! Even in resteraunts there is no room between the table and myself to nurse if Lani needs it! The worst nursing area is the “family bathroom” at the M@llof New H@mpshire. It smells like dirty diapers, the chair is cloth and has stains all over it, the sound of toilets flushing is deafening, and the overall space is dirty!

So, needless to say I do not use that space and will find a quiet corner in a store! Good thing I never tried JC Penney! (Read the article and you will see what I mean). The nicest nursing rooms were at S@ntas Vill@ge. It had a large comfortable chair that could be easily disenfected, air freshener, real flowers, and painted nicely! If only all public places took the time to make nice areas like that one there would be less stigma about us nursing in public! So, I was excited to see this article in my local paper this morning!


Ending the stigma of breast-feedingLawmakers want to make nursing easier

By Joelle Farrell Monitor staffJanuary 24. 2007 8:00AM

LORI DUFF / Monitor staff Courtney Germano breast-feeds her daughter Sylvia Dustin at the Hopkinton Library yesterday. Some lawmakers want to make it easier for women to breast-feed in public, in part by reminding business owners that they can’t ask breast-feeding women to leave.

Feeding a baby tends to attract more attention if the meal comes from a breast and not a bottle. Although state law allows women to nurse in public, business managers and their customers aren’t always comfortable with the idea. Mothers have been asked to cover up or move to a bathroom, a request that makes some feel embarrassed or angry.“If you don’t want to see my breast, me nursing my baby, then don’t look at me,” said Stephanie Zydenbos-Heino, 36, a mother of two in Weare. “I’m not going to go into a bathroom . . . to nurse my baby.”
Legislators hope they can help mothers feel confident about nursing in public by strengthening the language in the breast-feeding law. They also want to remind businesses that it is discriminatory to ask a nursing mother to leave or go to a restroom.If approved, the new law would add to the list of things breast-feeding is not: It is not indecent exposure, public nudity or disorderly conduct, and it shall not be considered a public nuisance.
“Lots of people still get freaked out by it, and I don’t know why,” said Rep. Christopher Serlin, a Portsmouth Democrat who is the prime sponsor of the bill. “Nobody would ask a woman bottle-feeding to go do it in the bathroom.”

A hearing on the bill will be held at the Legislative Office Building today at 10 a.m.Serlin decided to propose the bill after his wife was told to move away from the Portsmouth city pool when she was nursing their baby two summers ago. An employee at the pool told Serlin’s wife that she should move further out of view if she was nursing, Serlin said.Other women report similar experiences. Jennifer Fox, 30, of Goffstown, was asked to move when she nursed her 11-month-old girl outside the dressing rooms at the J.C. Penny in the Mall of New Hampshire two years ago. She was waiting for her husband to finish trying on clothes when a manager asked Fox if she would feel more comfortable nursing somewhere else.“She just stood there waiting for me to stop,” she said. “I was embarrassed and stunned. I didn’t know what to do, what to say.”
Fox found out later that a male clerk at a nearby register had called the manager because he was offended by Fox nursing her baby. Fox filed a complaint with the state’s Commission for Human Rights, which investigates claims of discrimination. The store sent her a letter of apology and Fox decided not to pursue the matter further.

In 1999, just before the New Hampshire Legislature passed a law concerning breast-feeding, the Wal-Mart in Concord refused to print copies of a woman’s photos that showed her nursing her child. Wal-Mart apologized to the woman, but store officials said it was their policy to not process pictures with obvious nudity, according to news accounts.The breast-feeding debate made headlines last fall when a New Mexico woman was kicked off a Delta Airlines flight after she refused to cover up while breast-feeding her toddler daughter.The state’s Commission for Human Rights has received no more than five complaints from women who have been hassled about breast-feeding in public, said Katharine Daly, the commission’s executive director. But lawmakers fear that young mothers may forgo breast-feeding to avoid embarrassment.
“The way they’ve been treated in public has discouraged women from breast-feeding,” said Sen. Martha Fuller Clark, who sponsored the breast-feeding law in 1999. “We are a much more mobile society. Women aren’t just at home with their very young children. . . . They shouldn’t be penalized for having to feed that child in a public place.”Most women interviewed yesterday said they cover most of their breast when feeding their children. Zydenbos-Heino said she would sometimes feed her son in the grocery store; she’d have him close to her chest in a sling, she said.Courtney Germano, a yoga instructor who lives in Hopkinton, said she dresses in layers, which makes nursing her 4-month-old daughter, Sylvia, more discrete. When Sylvia is hungry, she lifts her top layers and pulls the layer closest to her skin down, so her torso is still covered by clothes and her breast is mostly obscured by her child.“I don’t want to throw everyone off balance,” she said. “I think a lot of times, they don’t even notice.”

Studies have shown breast-feeding is beneficial to the health of infants and mothers. Babies have fewer ear infections and gastrointestinal illnesses when they breast-feed, and women tend to suffer less postpartum bleeding and decrease their risk of Type-2 diabetes. Yet only about a third of American women are breast-feeding their babies six months after the birth, according to a 2000 survey.

Carol Leonard of Hopkinton, who was a midwife for 30 years and now lobbies on behalf of the New Hampshire Midwives Association, said she thinks Americans are uncomfortable with breast-feeding because they usually see breasts in a sexual connotation. And mothers are wary of feeling embarrassed in public. She thinks the onus should be placed on society to accept breast-feeding.“You’re seeing more breast on T.V. at 8 o’clock than you would ever see from a mom who’s discretely nursing,” she said. “It’s the best thing for the baby. We’re just trying to encourage women to be comfortable with that.”—— End of articleBy JOELLE FARRELL