Mother sues for £20k for being discouraged from bf while the wave machine was on

[sizeofalentil]

Daily Mirror link to the story here.

I'm totally for breastfeeding wherever and whenever, but I wouldn't want to eat my sandwiches in a swimming pool - they are so germy, like a human soup, so not sure a swimming pool with a wave machine on would be the best place to bf. Plus, obviously in this case there was the waves.

I realise that getting out of the water, especially if she had other kids, with a hungry baby would be a massive faff, but wouldn't the wave machine splash the baby and make it choke?

Serious question: AIBU to think this? Is bf in a swimming pool a done thing? Genuinely curious.

It's called having common sense and good manners. Something that seems to be lacking an awful lot nowadays.

Offering a chair constitutes discouraging her from breastfeeding in the pool.
Why would it be necessary for the staff to do this?

Oh my gosh, This is brilliant.

You didn't answer my question, Same situation but on a bus. A woman standing with two children, one breast feeding, the bus is moving (Like the wave pool) then someone, the driver for example, offers her a seat.

Would you sue over this?
Becuase it's the same situation

Why does anyone ever offer a chair, Probably becuase they think it would make a the perosn they are askign more comfortable.

Offering a chair constitutes discouraging her from breastfeeding in the pool.

Suing also puts financial strain on businesses. But that's okay right? When they close down.

How would he have known she was feeding? Because she would have had her boob out. She isn't a discrete feeder.

Math you also never answered how it's possible to drain, fill, and get the correct chemical and temperature balance in one hour.

math
^Offering a chair constitutes discouraging her from breastfeeding in the pool.
Why would it be necessary for the staff to do this?^

There is so much wrong with your lengthy post I really don;t know where to begin. However, starting with your statement above... it would be as necessary and sensible as me offering my seat to an elderly gentleman on the bus but maybe I better stop doing that in case he thinks I think he is old and sues me.

For you to think the lifeguard "has an ignorant opinion" is ridiculous. How do you know that? You don't. Unless you are the woman concerned, hmmm. The lifeguard could have just been doing his job you know! But unfortunately some breastfeeding mothers take every look, every smile and comment, every offer of a chair, as a person trying to stop them feeding their baby in public! A lot of people are with you on this you know, they are just being nice! Maybe that applies to the lifeguard too y'know? Whilst you might be able to breastfeed whilst making a casserole and tapdancing at the same time, not everyone can. Likewise a wave pool where an outside factor (i.e. waves!) are deliberately happening so that people get water swirling round them at force, that's the fun of a wave pool and means there is something inherently more likely that you will get knocked over in a wave pool whilst breastfeeding rather than an ankle deep non swirling paddle pool. Fact.

And no, it is not a good thing we are more litigious. It is an extremely bad thing because the pendulum has swung the other way. Apart from people who sue because they think they have a right, we also have people who sue because they want to make a fast buck. You obviously have an axe to grind with big business but we also have to think of the small companies that struggle.

Let's hope we hear no more of this woman and the case dies a death and some normality comes back into the world and this awful sueing anyone for anything starts getting sensible.

The fact that swimming pools have lifeguards is proof that people can't be trusted to risk assess. People get it wrong frequently and think a behaviour is safe when the lifeguard's experience tells them otherwise.
The lifeguard will have a much better understanding of the strength of the waves and the effect they could have on someone sitting in the water than a guest.

There is a difference in how you would hold a baby in a pool if you weren't feeding it to if you were. If you weren't feeding it you would almost always hold them upright against your body facing either towards or against you.
If she was sitting in the water with the baby under the water to keep warm, then it's pretty obvious that a wave could easily cover the baby's head.

The place openly welcomes breastfeeding. For most mums that would make them feel welcome. No rational person would seriously be offended at being offered a chair!

Offering a chair constitutes discouraging her from breastfeeding in the pool

Passive aggressive chair offering?

No doubt the £20 is for the massive boob job she'll get once her kids have turned 14 and are too embarrassed to have her tits shoved in their gobs any more . She'll need to keep those boobs in the public domain, after all. Look!! my huge boobs!! they are still here!!

She's a self parody but has a big future in cheap porn!

No rational person would seriously be offended at being offered a chair!

Really this is it, soon people won't offer. I mean, who wants to offer help to someone bf'ing and risk getting a mouthful of abuse or sued 20k? Everything math has said is just such a harmful viewpoint to promoting and getting people to support breastfeeding. When I did it, I wanted a nice, comfy, private feeding room so I could concentrate on what I was doing and not worry about getting baby to latch, boob popping out etc. But to offer that is apparently rude? And yes I personally would have rather fed on a chair then in a wave pool because my babies were always too nosey to feed in a busy area and would have been bobbing on and off the nipple, not to mention it would just be easier on a chair. But the louder voices than mine who wish to be offered privacy and comfort are those that can get their bloody boobs out wherever they want and it's no ones damn business! Everyone must be educated on the virtues of breastfeeding! Give them even a single look and you are clearly a hater to the cause!

How these people don't see they are doing more harm than good is beyond me - I think they get so wrapped up in it they just want to make a point (and apparently a quick buck) wherever they can and screw everyone else. It's just breastfeeding, the large majority of people really don't give a shit either way what you are doing.

math

I really think some people - pregnant, with children, or without, behave in ways which are not in the best interests of themselves or their children

It seems nonsense to suggest that people with small babies are immune to behaving foolishly

You also make an awful lot of assumptions about the fact that a lifeguard would not offer a chair a pregnant woman, or suggest a woman with a newborn might be safer out of the pool

What assume breastfeeding mothers have some mystical sense of what is safe?

Why assume the lifeguard targeted breastfeeding?

It really sounds so paranoid to me

The correct analogy is the driver offering the woman a seat at the nearest bus stop because she is breastfeeding while other women are standing on the bus and holding their babies in the exact same position a breastfeeding woman would hold her baby, and in exactly the same conditions (bus moving).

It really is nobody else's damn business if other women get their boobs out in public. It's not the virtues of breastfeeding that others need education on.
It's the fact that it's not sexual.

Give them even a single look and you are clearly a hater to the cause!
Nothing like a bit of gross exaggeration to add a little spice to a thread.
Nobody likes to be ogled while breastfeeding. Or walking from point A to point B while female. Men don't own the outdoors.
Nobody should feel she has to drag her whole family of older children away to a secluded place to breastfeed the baby.

Women have the right to breastfeed in public. We don't have to apologise for it and we don't have to seek a secluded place if we don't want to.
Women who insist on exercising that right are doing a lot more good than you realise.

We women enjoy all the rights we currently have because of behaviour by other women that was considered outrageous. Suffragettes chained themselves to railings and threw themselves under horses and went on hunger strike in prison and thanks to them we can all vote. It took hundreds of years of campaigning by women to arrive at the point where we were considered full human beings in the legal sense, equal to men and not chattel. All of the ideas of what is proper and appropriate for women nowadays were once considered absolutely wrong and evidence that the End was Nigh.

Narp -- are wave pools all used only by adults who are not pregnant? I would bet my bottom dollar that there were parents in that pool holding their babies or young children and that many of them were being held in exactly the way a breastfeeding mother would hold her baby. I bet there were pregnant women in it too, who were much more likely to be thrown off balance than women who were not pregnant. If the pool had notices posted forbidding breastfeeding in the pool then they shouldn't have. If they had no notices then it was not right to ask the mother to go and sit on a chair at the side.

It is really laughable to speak of unfounded assumptions when this thread features so many assumptions about the woman who has sued, even down to predictions about future boob jobs.

LogicalThinking -- What makes breastfeeding in the wave pool unsafe as opposed to holding a baby in the same position but not breastfeeding?

We women enjoy all the rights we currently have because of behaviour by other women that was considered outrageous. Suffragettes chained themselves to railings and threw themselves under horses and went on hunger strike in prison and thanks to them we can all vote.

What has that got your do with a woman who is a serial complainer and seems to apparently get of ended at the drop of a hat?

It seems to me that you think women that breastfeed can never do no wrong and suddenly become saints when give birth...

Women who insist on exercising that right are doing a lot more good than you realise.

So you are saying that women who don't are doing some sort of disservice to others.

I think you are really over egging this to make a point.

It really is nobody else's damn business if other women get their boobs out in public.

But this story isn't about that
Nobody at all has been offened b y breasts here. Someoen offered someone else a chair.

The correct analogy is the driver offering the woman a seat at the nearest bus stop because she is breastfeeding while other women are standing on the bus and holding their babies in the exact same position a breastfeeding woman would hold her baby, and in exactly the same conditions (bus moving).

You are wrong, very wrong, you are also adding total nonsense to the facts. You don't know who else was in the pool, how the other women were holding the baby or anything else.
Unless you happen to be the woman in question.

All you know is:

1. Someone offered a brestfeeding woman a seat close to the poolside because a wave machine was on.

Why have you added a load of stuff?

Women have the right to breastfeed in public.

Women also have the right to breast feed in the center of the M4, doesn't mean other people don't have the right to offer them a safer place to do it.

It is really laughable to speak of unfounded assumptions when this thread features so many assumptions about the woman who has sued, even down to predictions about future boob jobs.

This is funny, coming from a person who has suddenly added a pool full of mothers holding to the wave pool, in order to try and prove she was wronged.

Women who take offence at a glance or a smile or the offer of a seat are the ones who are doing damage to those who just want to get on with bfing and not make a fuss.

No, men don't own the outdoors, and here will be plenty of women like this one making sure they know that. If I was younger you would have put me off bfing in public TBH because women like the one in question make it so so much harder for everyone else because they are turning public opinion the wrong way. Great strides have been made since I BF, let it happen more naturally instead of challenging everyone who dares to look at a bfing women - mostly they are thinking 'good on you' or 'what a lovely baby'.

Totally disagree with your BFing woman stood on the bus. It is very different BFing than just holding a baby and there are some lovely people out there who realise that and want to offer a seat and those that complain at this should get over themselves. It would be the first thing I would think of doing. Not now. This view is really going to stop the offering of seats or doing things for others for fear of being shouted at or sued. What a bloody shame, it really is. This sort of nonsense sue culture will do great damage to everyday life as more and more people keep themselves to themselves.

LogicalThinking -- What makes breastfeeding in the wave pool unsafe as opposed to holding a baby in the same position but not breastfeeding?
Absolutely nothing - I would consider both to be unsuitable when the wave machine is on and I would expect the lifeguard to have a much better understanding of the dangers of the wave pool than any of the swimmers.
Why is sitting on a chair next to the pool so harmful for women's rights? She wasn't being asked to cover up or to hide away, just move a couple of metres to a safer position.
What if she had wanted to take the baby onto a slide, convinced that she could hold him securely, should she be allowed to decide for herself what is safe?

Ok math, you clearly just want a good old lactivist rant and I don't have the time to indulge in to be honest. I will just say that for every extreme pro-breast feeder like you I have met or spoken to, I just feel how exhausting it must be to have such negative views and live in a complete bubble of just looking for ways to say you are being discriminated against . The suffragettes did what they did so women had choice and freedom. Who are you (and the lady who is suing) to take away my choice to be offered a chair at a pool/have private rooms available/be offered a chair on a bus while breastfeeding? Because that is all you are doing when you take everything as a personal and hidden meaning insult against breastfeeding and shout at, complain or sue anyone who dares to do all these things.

And on the same token, comparing what the suffragettes did to get our vote and the extreme measures they had to take, just confirms that some women see themselves as breastfeeding leaders of the cause who deliberately feed in stupid situations to get a reaction that they then start crowing must be negative. It's funny isn't it that mothers of formula fed babies manage to keep their child fed outside of a wave pool, don't need to stand on a bus and feed them etc. But of course no one is allowed to say that, because that would be seen as negativity towards breastfeeding mothers.

I see from a Google that she's also a TinyTalk teacher, though it looks like the page has been taken down.

Women who insist on exercising that right are doing a lot more good than you realise.

So you are saying that women who don't are doing some sort of disservice to others

I wasn't, but now you have mentioned it, it does make sense that the more women feel they ought to spare the sensibilities of others and retire to the ladies loo to breastfeed, the less helpful they are being in the long run to women in general and to the cause of public breastfeeding. The point of the right to feed in public is that feeding can be done in public after all.

LogicalThinking, thank you for agreeing with me that other women were potentially putting their babies in danger. We do not know if the lifeguard asked them all to leave the pool. Should he have?
(It was a wave pool so I think we actually can assume there were lots of young children there, and babies too).
We do know that the lifeguard asked a breastfeeding woman to leave.
Were there signs posted asking women not to enter the pool with babes in arms?
Were there signs posted asking women not to breastfeed in the pool?
If women carrying babies in the pool were not asked to sit down, and only the woman breastfeeding was, with baby in the same carrying position, then the breastfeeding woman was being discriminated against, purely for breastfeeding.
If there is no substantial difference between holding a baby across your chest and holding a baby across your chest with your nipple in his mouth, in the wave pool, then it is the breastfeeding that the lifeguard was objecting to, and there was no safety issue.

Discrimination against one breastfeeding woman should concern us all. It shouldn't concern us that the plaintiff is a serial complainer. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. The boy who cried wolf was right one time.

I am not a lactivist btw. I am very grateful to those women who were and who are. I am concerned that there are so many on this thread who do not understand how precedent works.

let it happen more naturally...
Yes, that would work. Society always sits up and takes note of problems they are not aware of such as hostility towards public breastfeeding, because the people with the problem are hidden away in filthy public loos trying to feed their babies.
When it comes to women's rights, nothing was ever improved by waiting for improvement to happen naturally. It always took activism. The activism was always called 'outrageous'.
... instead of challenging everyone who dares to look at a bfing women
Is this what happened here, or is this something you made up?
Or do you really not trust women to understand the difference between nudge-nudge-wink-wink attention and friendly smiles?

Blimey, there is a lot of internalised misogyny on this thread. It is clear that when it comes to attitudes towards public breastfeeding, women are not necessarily friends to other women.

The suggestion that she should sit on a chair had nothing to do with anyone's sensibilities, it was to do with safety.
And I am quite sure that the lifeguards always point out any potentially risky behaviour they see. It doesn't always have to be spelt out on signs because most people don't need everything spelling out to them.

I fully support any woman's right to breastfeed openly without fear of judgement or shame. I also support women who are more comfortable feeding in private. That right applies in almost any location, but it does require a little bit of common sense. There are only a tiny number of places where breastfeeding is not appropriate, in a wave pool is one of them. This woman is not helping any other women, she is only helping herself. I do not feel supported by her.

How could it possibly be anything to do with safety? Wave pools that don't have signs posted forbidding children under a certain age are going to have babies in them. Parents are going to be holding those babies. If there was a safety issue then no babies would have been allowed.

And you are also saying a wave pool is an 'inappropriate' place to breastfeed.

Which reason do you really believe was behind the lifeguard's suggestion?