a mum was asked to leave local swimming pool because she was breastfeeding. Is this allowed?

[chocolateorange]

just back from pool with my 2 dd. A woman and her friend were there with their babies who were about 5mo.

One of the women discreetly (wouldn't care if she wasn't tbh), began to bf. She was half in pool half out, in the very shallow end.

After about 5mins she was told to stop at once or leave. 2 men had complained, reasons given were

their children would see her breast and be offended.
their children would ask questions. wtf!
it's "disgusting"
there are germs in the water and she shouldn't do it there.

this was all echoed by the manager (a man) who then asked her to leave.

I am absolutely furious.

Can they do this?

tia

Haven't heard back from the swimming pool yet but will be going there next week so may see if anyone has looked at it yet

i understood that juule. some people like myself have v loving dh's who just cannot be there to split the childcare even in that ordinary sort of circumstance like yours.

Splitting the childcare makes for a not v.loving dh?

Or do you mean that your dh is v.loving despite not being able to split the childcare?
If so, sorry for the

I don't see huge queues of men complaining about naked breasts offending children on the beaches of the Costas.

Indeed! Or objecting to 'lads' magazines being sold in site of their children, highly-sexualised music videos, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum

Lots of posters have suggested situations where the need to bf in or around pool has or may arise, and lots of others have suggested ways they might have avoided the situation...perhaps that is because we are all different?!

The woman has, or should have, the right to do what she did - whether or not you would exercise that right is not the fecking point!

Foxy re-read your post objectively, alongside my post with the word 'patronising' substituted for 'insulting'. I really can't be bothered to re-explain it and end up going round in circles as I generally try to avoid personal slanging matches tbh.

Moving on though ladies, rather than falling out amongst ourselves over minor details it seems to me that in general we are generally thinking the same way. There definitely needs to be a law in England like the one in Scotland - anyone got any ideas how we can actually get the power of MN behind this?

I'm just musing whether the antibacterial properties of breastmilk might actually lower the number of bugs floating in a pool, and therefore all lactating mothers ought to helpfully contribute to pool cleanliness this way...

I've just remembered, and I think I might actually have fed in a pool myself. In a hotel pool on a weekend break. A startled splashy babycarrot was on the verge of a meltdown in the pool and a few seconds of nursing later she was calm again and happy to carry on having fun. I think we are talking less than a minute. To have denied her that would have probably resulted in an escalation of distress and abandoning the pool for good. Nothing to do with nutrition, and everything to do with quick, on the spot comfort. Nobody would have clocked a thing, I'm sure.

I'd forgotten all about it until just now.

"Is it in fact mainly inaccurate (or at all helpful) to label people as ff or bf'ers when in fact for various reasons the vast majority of mothers have in fact done both. It is also rather patronising to assume that just because you are not bfing you wouldn't know that cuddling your baby helps to warm them up"

No it is not rather insulting imo. A lot of women have breastfed. 76% of women in England will have put her newborn baby to the breast at least once every year, and that by the statistician's interpretation means that they have breastfed. In fact, we know that 30% of those women will have quit by the end of two weeks. A further 20% by the end of 6 months and most of the remaining 26% are mix feeding or already started solids before six months.

So to say that most of us 'have done both' is a bit unfair, esp. when by far the majority of women will not have be breastfeeding long enough by 3 months when they may take their baby for their first dip in a public pool and therefore be able to use breastfeeding as something other than for feeding - nutrition transfer. Without a longer experience with breastfeeding a woman will not have had the time to appreciate breastfeeding as a mothering tool in tandem with (no pun intended) a feeding tool. Women start out breastfeeding but then learn to nurse their baby with the breast.

BTW, I was not labeling people as breast feeders or formula feeders. I was labeling feeding methods as such. They are disparate and if we are to have a discussion, it is important to assign definitions in order to have a discussion which will make sense. They are different things. Pretending that they are not is unhelpful when you are expecting to have a reasonable conversation.

I disagree about the not understanding the nursing aspect fwiw. I didn't bf dd for very long but not having that to calm a newborn was one of the things that worried me most when switching. I guess it's different for different people. She didn't feed constantly like they are meant to so maybe I had a strange experience of it, but found that side came very naturally. (unfortunately her gaining any weight didn't, but that's a different story)

In terms of the stats 76% of women feed one baby. A woman therefore may not bf her first at all and bf second, or the other way round. Therefore the stats on how many women have bf are higher than 76% of mothers.

You are right though that obviously they are different methods, and to separate the methods is obviously absolutely reasonable. As I said, it may be just how the post reads but often on here I read about 'bf-ers' or 'ff-ers' and I think like all labelling of people for whatever reason it is unhelpful and in this case it is often inaccurate.

BigTeuch: yes we're of course all different, and I do wholeheartedly support every woman's right to bf in public in whatever way makes her feel comfortable, and whenever / wherever she wants. Come on though, bf IN a swimming pool where others are swimming is not only about the bf mother and her child, it also concerns everyone else swimming in that pool!!

(And the idea of the antibacterial qualities of breastmilk making the pool water better quality & cleaner is simply hilarious I suddenly had this image of loads of bf mums coming in to clean up the pool water by squirting milk around. Don't take notice of me).

Brettgirl, you are misinterpreting the 76% statistic. every 5 yrs the infant feeding survey is done in the UK. the last one was 2005. the research is of the women who gave birth that year. it does not consider whether the baby was a first or subsequent child. so some of those mothers will be attempting to breastfeed for the first time and some will not. for some it will be their first child and for some it will not be. iyswim.

Hmmm...like bf-ing on a bus would 'concern' other passengers or bf-ing in a cafe would equally 'concern' other customers?

Surely, as long as you are not physically causing a nuisance (blocking an entrty point to pool or something) then whether you have your baby at your breast or not is not really an issue, surely??

Obv I meant my suggestion to be tongue in cheek, but the antibacterial qualities actually WOULD decrease the bad bugs - strange but true...

"Milk was collected from 9 mothers and divided into three samples: the first was analyzed the same day; the second was refrigerated (at 4 to 6 degrees C) for 48 hours; and the third was refrigerated for 72 hours. Each sample was then contaminated with an E.coli solution (the kind of nasty bacteria that dwells in toilets) and left for two hours. When the samples were tested, levels of E.coli had reduced by 80% in both the milk that was fresh and the milk that was 48 hours old. Levels had also diminished in the 3 day-old milk, but only by around 10%, indicating that the antibacterial properties, whilst still present, had started to degrade by this point."

I'm not misinterpreting the statistic. It asks women if they bf their baby (whether 1st, 2nd or 20th) at all and 76% gave at least one bf. My point is that the number of women who bf (at all) will be higher than that statistic because they may bf previous or subsequent babies.

Interesting idea Carrot, perhaps bf cafes should be encouraged to operate in swimming pools?

I see, so you are saying that because, for argument's sake, 95% of women in the UK has attempted to breastfeed that all 95% will have enough experience to pass a valid opinion on breastfeeding in (or not) in a pool?

How much bfing experience would you consider enough to pass a valid opinion on bfing in a swimming pool?

And is it just women in the UK or can anyone join in?

BigTeuch, no, IMO bf in a cafe or on a bus would most certainly not concern others. Why would it? And what does that have to do with bf IN the swimming pool, where others are swimming too?

Well, I have personally squirted milk across a cafe onto someone's jacket

...it could have actually gone on the table, utensils or even in someone's coffee, which is pretty disgusting and distasteful - but still I can breastfeed in a cafe

I can also confirm that I most definitely leaked milk in the pool, probably in response to holding my baby close and the temperature change, I dunno.

So, should all lactating mothers be banned from pools?

So do you think that people have to be an expert in something to have a valid opinion?

Interesting idea, perhaps it could be rolled out to politicians? Our whole country is based on people having opinions/making decisions on things they know nothing about. I am fairly confident that I know more about bfing than ed balls does about education, for example.

"...it could have actually gone on the table, utensils or even in someone's coffee, which is pretty disgusting and distasteful - but still I can breastfeed in a cafe"

No offence BTLT but if you lactated in my coffee I wouldn't drink it . The question is - if I didn't notice would you tell me???

no, someone doesn't have to be an 'expert' at breastfeeding and no one can quantify how much if any experience a person ought to have about breastfeeding. Some people may have no hand's on experience with breastfeeding at all (eg men and women who are well informed about breastfeeding and view it as the normal way to feed a baby and whose role maybe that of supporting mothers on a regular basis) but still have valid opinions on breastfeeding many times even a more rounded experience of it than some mothers who have breastfed for a long time.

However, women who has done it and their opinions of it is that it was 'weird' 'yucky' ?Crackednipplesteethnotenoughmilkdoctorsaid!? "Icriedfor2weekssolid2andwillgostraighttobottleforthenextone" "mybreastsareformyhusband" "itisthebesthingIcan'tseewhyanyonewouldformulafeed". I don't want to pretend that their jaundiced opinion is as valid as those of women who have had a more well rounded and insightful experience and breastfed past establishing it (6-12 wks) and got a more long term view of it.

What a strange premonition, q&a with ed balls on mn . How random, maybe I should buy a lottery ticket!!!

Foxytocin - so basically any woman who has a different opinion to you hasn't a valid opinion they have a jaundiced opinion

Not a chance Brettgirl!

If, however, I visited your new house and managed to get bm on your new leather sofa and silk cushions I would definitely own up, and then make it worse by trying to clean them...

Perhaps it is only I that should be banned from bf-ing anywhere...