To be getting fed up of these type of jumping on the band wagon breastfeeding threads

[sharonthewaspandthewineywall]

here

FTR I'm very pro breastfeeding and think where children are permitted mothers should be able to feed their babies in whichever way they choose. But to me this is a completely different situation and this running to the papers screaming about the inequity of it all is pointless and doesnt actually help in cases where people do breach the equality act.
So AIBU?

I dont know they seem to manage ok staying out late on holidays abroad.

But maybe here busy pub not best with child in pushchair at night.
I also worked in a pub an alcoholic used to leave her child in pushchair all afternoon while she drank wine :(

So 1 of you say 11 w can wait other saying claridges under 12w cant, yes. I assume thats as we dont know age of that baby.
I am assuming claridges was told to cover up as she was exposed or directly opposite people.
It may be a little embarrassing to be asked politely to cover up but not a huge disaster.

The you dont need to feed immediately is in response to leedy so dont need to do it public. As i think where she is going is arguing against the need to feed in public
I actually agree you need to feed as and when in public as not all babies are on a schedule but say feeding in the pool say, is a choice you are making, as discussed its unlikely to be necessary or common as baby is only feeding that frequently for a few weeks.
Really she was having breaks every 25mins for how long? And then working another 25min?
I just think it can be much fun for a babysitter /husband when the bf mum goes out and leaves baby 2-3hrs and they have to amuse it without food, its not something i would enjoy doing as usually surely for longer absences a formula fed baby would have formula left in say the GP house for them, just in case,
Or they take some formula with the baby when they go out.?
Sort of reminds me of the theead where mum worried the nursery were giving baby milk/formula when she said nothing while the baby was there only water, cant remember age of baby but think the other babies were all getting formula/milk. Just seems strange to me. Yes bf is very important and at the start you dont want to cause issues by giving expressed milk or later cows milk.
But it is a bit like someone said formula has saved a lot of babies lives, its unlikely to kill or harm them certainly after 6m, when you are introducing other foods. So if you want to go out and cant express some back up formula is probably not the end of the world, even just in case you are delayed.
(And DC was ebf till a yr- i just didnt need to go out alone but if i had, aside from the fact she was allergic to formula, i would have done the above just in case, probably the expressing

Porto - you cant say they will take the bottle some just wont(thry are individuals. I think she didnt like plastic so no
Dummies pushed out by tongue
Bottles
Teethers
:(
Never ever any of those
Its probably sensory
Even squirting the ebm in mouth no go.
You cant say a definite with kids.
Otherwise you could say all babies would bf and that doesnt seen to be true either.
I really hope DC2 is more 'normal' as DC1 is generally a bit awkward and individual.

Rootandbranch I think you are splitting hairs (at 15.59) It's not that no-one wants tp 'see' kids per se surely it's just that there is a very great possibility of kids being disruptive so that's why some of us don't want to see them at some places.

Goodness me, I have 4 children and have bf all of them. I think bf is bloody brilliant. I must be really stupid because I just don't get some of these posts.

"The you dont need to feed immediately is in response to leedy so dont need to do it public. As i think where she is going is arguing against the need to feed in public"

Not sure where you're getting that from - I don't think "BF mums can be away from their babies for relatively short periods of time between feeds" means "BF babies don't need to be fed in public". Just because you are not glued to the baby 24/7 it doesn't mean you shouldn't feed your baby as soon as possible WHILE YOU ARE WITH THE BABY. In my case, the longest mine would go between feeds was nap times, so if I was going to avoid feeding in public I would have to schedule all trips out of the house for during naps, and for no longer than the duration of the nap, and...actually my head hurts just thinking about it.

"Really she was having breaks every 25mins for how long? And then working another 25min?"

As a musician myself, that sounds perfectly plausible. She wasn't doing some kind of shift at the club ("I HAVE HIRED YOU TO DO A SHIFT OF THREE HOURS OF NON STOP CLASSICAL MUSIC WITH ONE TEA BREAK"), she was performing some string quartet pieces, presumably one part of the program was 25 minutes long, then there was an interval, then there was another piece of whatever length. They don't pay musicians like that by the hour unless they're, I dunno, playing the piano in a hotel lobby (a friend of mine did this and it was apparently the worst job ever, he quit after he was mocked by one of Milli Vanilli...)

"I just think it can be much fun for a babysitter /husband when the bf mum goes out and leaves baby 2-3hrs and they have to amuse it without food, its not something i would enjoy doing as usually surely for longer absences a formula fed baby would have formula left in say the GP house for them, just in case,"

Well, I said an hour or two, not 2-3 hours (I wouldn't have left them for that long until they were on solids) and no, it apparently wasn't that traumatic for anyone. As I said, I usually scheduled it around nap time so would feed baby, stick baby in buggy and wheel it til baby crashed out, hand over crashed-out baby to grandmother, baby would normally have only woken up ten/fifteen minutes ago when I got back, or was still asleep. Hardly neglectful mum of the year, and no, when I returned they were usually not screaming. If I didn't think they were going to sleep I probably wouldn't have gone away for more than half an hour (more like "can you mind him for a bit while I pop down the road to the shop" than "I'm off down the swimming pool").

" its unlikely to kill or harm them certainly after 6m, when you are introducing other foods. So if you want to go out and cant express some back up formula is probably not the end of the world, even just in case you are delayed."

Well, once they were on solids their carer could just give them food, no?

Porto - you cant say they will take the bottle some just wont(thry are individuals. I think she didnt like plastic so no

So where are the headline: "Baby dies because it refused a bottle"? I've never seen one. What about the lactose intolerant babies, the CMPA babies? They aren't dying in great number are they? They must be getting their milk from something other than the breast

I think the idea was to keep the baby backstage.

Even though the club didn't allow children

It may be a little embarrassing to be asked politely to cover up but not a huge disaster.

It's a bit of a disaster for Claridges, given that it breaks the law and could lead to legal action against them.

Though I probably would decline an invitation to an adults-only wedding if one of them was still a babe-in-arms and couldn't be left for the whole day (and/or ask if the B&G make exceptions for tiny babies, some do), I don't see what's wrong with that.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It would be very wrong to assume that the bride and groom will break their 'no kids rule' for you, just because your baby is breastfed, or get pissed off with them if they do not do so.

What about the lactose intolerant babies, the CMPA babies? They aren't dying in great number are they? They must be getting their milk from something other than the breast

Not sure of the relevance of this, but surely lactose intolerant babies don't get milk at all?

Really she was having breaks every 25mins for how long? And then working another 25min?

She was in a club, naty, why do you have a problem with that? They're hardly likely to have booked her to play Beethoven's 9th Symphony, with or without breaks between movements.

Not sure of the relevance of this, but surely lactose intolerant babies don't get milk at all?

The relevance is that they have to be fed by other means than the breast i.e. bottle etc. Lactose intolerant babies have soya milk.

It was because someone was talking about 'bottle refuseniks' and you don't see many headlines saying that babies are dying by the dozen because they refuse anything other than the breast

Portofino, if a baby refuses to feed from a bottle or other artificial feeding method then eventually they will be hospitalised. Then they will be tube fed via a nasal gastro tube, or if they won't tolerate that then they would end up on a drip. So they wouldn't die. It wouldn't be very nice though.

A lot of bottle refusing babies would probably take a bottle eventually after a lot of upset and distress. Most parents would clearly try and avoid that if at all possible.

A lot of bottle refusing babies would probably take a bottle eventually after a lot of upset and distress. Most parents would clearly try and avoid that if at all possible.

So people should stop moaning that their baby is a bottle refusenik and is attached to the breast all the time, and accept that THAT perhaps has its limitations in some circumstances and they should thus be prepared.

So we are back at square one !!

Portofino, I think that this musician was horribly optimistic that this kind of private members club would accommodate her requests. She was probably just trying to solve a problem in what seemed like the most obvious way to her.

I imagine she needed the job being probably self employed, or was booked before her baby was due and hadn't really thought it through.

I definitely don't think that breastfeeding makes you special or entitled to special treatment. Clearly work places are not suitable for babies to be when the parent is supposed to be carrying out their work function. However I equally think that breastfeeding is normal and that women should not be otherwise discriminated against because they need to breastfeed e.g. in the Claridges case.

However I equally think that breastfeeding is normal and that women should not be otherwise discriminated against because they need to breastfeed e.g. in the Claridges case.

If a man had walked into Claridges in a string vest he, too, would have been asked to cover up. Where is the discrimination? Anyway, that discussion was done to death, and I'm not going there again

Nonsense, Portofino. If your child is a bottle refusenik you simply plan your life around it, as described above. You certainly don't set up a great deal of misery and stress for both you and the baby on the offchance that there might come a time when there's a problem. And the fact that, if you absolutely had to, you would find a way round the problem in the same way that this lady did, does not mean that no-one should ever be in the slightest bit helpful to you even when it would cause them no difficulty at all.

So, Portofino, given that you acknowledge that it has been explained more than once on the other thread why your analogy just doesn't work, would you care to explain why you think there was no discrimination in the Claridge's case? Because no-one on that thread ever managed it.

Portofino, I really want to discuss with you the reasons why "man in a string vest" and "woman who is breastfeeding" are different, and why one is protected by the Equalities Act and the other is not. So that's a shame, but never mind.

I wish that someone would take one of these "being asked to cover up" cases to court as a test case to make it very clear what the interpretation of the Equalities Act is, so there is no need for endless debate on the matter.

Im being entirely serius DD would not take a bottle.
Several attempts over several months.
Cmpi is prescription only milk. Neocate ?

Though apparently you cant get it with bf (dont think i believe that)

Not soya anymore as it can affect baby, hormones maybe.
If baby bf is allergic mum cuts out the food.

I was asking a question not being sarky. Really they do that? Seems strange to have so many breaks.

Surely babies need something to drink other than water if left all day at nursery after 6m as they are only tasting food the nutrients are in the milk (and dont bottle fed ones have a suggestion of how much in a day.
2 bf a day , before and after and maybe another in night doesnt seem a lot when i was still feeding about 8 times a day at that point.
But yes for an hr or so a bit of solids.

Nonsense, Portofino. If your child is a bottle refusenik you simply plan your life around it, as described above

Absolutely - and that INCLUDES not going where children are not allowed

So, Portofino, given that you acknowledge that it has been explained more than once on the other thread why your analogy just doesn't work, would you care to explain why you think there was no discrimination in the Claridge's case? Because no-one on that thread ever managed it.

No, I wouldn't care to explain Ici. We've been there and done that in the other thread. As I said, not doing it again no matter how much you beg

If a man had walked into Claridges in a string vest he, too, would have been asked to cover up.

Oh for fucks sake. Ola Jordan went to Claridges a few months ago in what was essentially a string vest and was categorically not asked to cover up. The one and only reason for this is that bare tits are fine as long as a man is getting pleasure from them. Otherwise they are downright offensive.

There is no solution to tge bottle refusers though as the nhs wouldnt tell people if you exclusively bf 1/x babies then wont take a bottle so you are tied.
It would be useful info if you intend to return to work or need to go places without baby.
It might put people off bf and its not like you can predict which babies will do this.
I expect by dc2 though you would have heard from other mums that this is possible though. Whether you believe it could happen to you though...
It could go the other way with dc2 and i introduce a bottle of bm and they start refusing bf.

Because babies are so different its impossible to know what the musician thought would happen while she was playing from
Baby cries the whole time from separation
To baby will nap and not need feeding till after whole performance
Baby is ill or teething.
Even the mum cant predict for certain

I wouldnt say i was a martyr to ebf but i coukdnt have slept for more than 6 hrs for 11m.
But actually that is not the worst much worse it having a baby that wont nap except on you and cries when you put it down on back from about 3days old. You cant exactly sleep when baby does.
Im convinced how easy/ difficult dc1 is determines somewhat the age gap. I really needed some me time by a year.

I'm certainly not begging, Portofino, I'm just bemused as to why you bother to keep coming up with proclamations that you seem incapable of backing up.

On the other thread, you and one or two others kept popping up claiming that Claridges weren't discriminating, whereupon various kind souls explained why, as a matter of law, they were. None of the pro-Claridges people ever managed to come back and produce any argument against that, but instead would wait and just repeat the same thing, as if they hoped it might come true if they said it often enough. And you've done it again, and have once again failed to put forward any logical argument to support what you say. And you'll probably do it again, sadly. I don't imagine you'll for one moment entertain the possibility that you might not be the oracle on discrimination law that you suggest.

I don't think it is possible to have it all - you can't exclusively breastfeed (presumably the baby wouldn't take a bottle) and work at 11 weeks. Maybe she shouldn't have taken the gig if she cannot leave her baby with a babysitter and expressed milk. I exclusively breastfed and curtailed my life to suit that choice, accepting that there were places that I wouldn't be able to take a baby. I still went out for meals etc but i wouldn't have expected my favourite pub, which has a no children policy, to let me in with my baby. Why should a private members club make exceptions to a rule for her and nobody else when their members pay a lot of money for a particular environment?