Bottle feeding mum asked to leave breast feeding cafe

[Dawnybabe]

In my local paper, the Eastern Daily Press, of Norfolk, they ran a story about a mum who had, through a friend, been asked by a member of staff at a PCT run breast feeding cafe not to return because she had bottle fed her four month old son. Please tell me I'm not the only one absolutely incandescant with rage over this? Apparently she had a medical reason for bottle feeding as well. Aren't the staff being as bigoted as the general public who force the need for a breast feeding cafe in the first place? Surely the attitude should be that you are safe to feed there however you like without any prejudice? There is enough pressure and guilt forced on bottle feeding mums as it is without staff who should know better joining in the witch hunt.

SWC, email them to air your concerns

There may very well not be one in your area - funding issues mean they're not everywhere

Actually there are things that FF mums need support over: lots of changing ideas of how and when to ake up, how long to keep out of fridge, getting baby to take a certain amount, baby falling asleep over milk, baby not drinking enough, baby drinking too much, baby getting colic, baby being ill and what to do about feeding.....etc. Many are the same as for breast feeding I would imagaine too.

I still think there would be an outcry if a group of people decided to set up a FF only cafe, regardless of the way it was funded. I can only imagine the comments we'd have on a MN thread!

BTE I don't think it is wrong that we have BF councsellors and support. But I do think this woman was treated badly and discriminated against because she was unable to breast feed her child.

I was actually answering Hulababy's post above yours

Hula, are you saying that all ffeeding mums should be welcome as regular patrons of a Baby Cafe?

Do you accept my points about funding of same?

Hula - yes but almost all of the 'issues' that can arise with FF are "one-offs" - once you know what/how to do it it's easy and problems are few and far betwee you're unlikely to need to go to a support group to help you out

That's a shame, SWC. I would hope that people would understand that bfeeding can go wrong for all sorts of reason and be supportive of your feeding method with your DS and of your hope to bfeed your unborn baby.

Please drop them an email though - hopefully they'll set your mind at rest.

Otherwise you run the risk of cutting off a valuable support resource on the basis of mights and possibles - there's every chance your local Baby Cafe will welcome you and be very supportive.

anyhow - I must go and sort out the dinner and the 2 older DS's bath while DS3 is settled in his bouncy chair having just had a bottle of FF...............and then wash the bottles to make some more up and express some ebm for him too [grin[

I'm not sure why you are getting quite so rattled and agitated psweu. Your point (about limited funded so it should be targetted etc, ...can't have resources used by those who are not intending to breastfeed etc) is reasonable in the generality.

If a group of mums who were ff and not intending to breastfeed were regularly adopting this venue as a place to hang out and sup cheap tea then it would be inappropriate.

But why can't you comprehend that this situation was a very different scenario ? - an individual ff mum accompanied a group of her breastfeeding friends to this cafe - probably as a one-off. Where's the problem!?!
Surely you can see that the actions of the cafe were ill-advised, ham fisted and ..well hurtful actually

psweudonym - no I don't BUT I think that the level of support and advice should be the same for ALL mums regardless of how they feed their baby. I do think that by having the segrarted support it leads to a whole them and us type scenario, and can be more damaging and divisive.

Oh. I give up.

I should've stayed fucked off.

Psweudonym's posts brought to you by Hunkermunker, who has, again, left the building.

I agree with HMC. It was the handling of this one individual mum who was acompanying her friends that is the issue. Would this mum have been fine had she sat their with her coffee, with her friends, and not fed her child at all? Then no one would know if she was BF or FF anyway.

oh HUNKER - before you b*gger off (again ) did you get my email in reply to yours about the storage bags???

psweudonym - but surely I am entitled to have mny own thoughts on this too. I don't have to agree. I was a failed breast feeding and the support I recieved was utter garbage, and I am afraid I did suffer from ill made comments from the "BF is the only acceptable way" HVs at the time. Hence my strong thoughts on this.

Dinosaur - I am only basing it on what is written here, and IMO, for any mum to be sent home from any form of support group feeling guilty and upset is wrong.

I have taken them on board (didn't need to as I amready know them, I am preyy genned up ont his stuff anyway TBH) but I still believe this woman, from what we have heard was treated badly if she was made to feel so upset and guilty. And that is simply not on. If the tables were turned it wouldn't be on either.

I am fully supportive of anyone who choses to breast feed, or formula feed for that matter. And anyone who wants support in their feeding should be given as much support as they need. It's a shame there isn't more funding and counsellors available to be able to offer this leevel of service as it is.

But yes, having been made to feel rotten myself over being unable to breast feed, by people who are supposed to be there in a supportive role, does give me a biased view over the situation described on the OP.

Breastfeeding / ff is not an emotive issue for me. I breastfed mine - not long term but exclusively for first 6 months.

And I have taken psweud's point on board (about funding, targetting resources etc). I just don't think this argument is any kind of defence in this particular situation (as it has been reported)

that is shocking i only bf my dd for 6weeks as milk makes me sick and i smelt of it therfore making me sick i regrett not trying harder now but i couldnt keep anything down!
My dd drank fm better than bm which i was gratefull for

It's not a cafe, it's a breastfeeding support group offering breastfeeding advice. Anon-profit organisation funded by the PCT to support breastfeeding. The group shouldn't really have gone there purely as a social thing given its actual purpose.
There may be a huge difference between what the organiser said to the Friend and how the Friend passed the message on.

It is not the same as someone being asked to leave a real cafe for feeding their baby.

Would you feel the same about a man being asked to leave a Battered Wives cafe? Or a white person being asked to leave an Asian Community Group?

Vis a vis the "why can't we have integrated support cafes for everyone" point, in an ideal world yes of course that would be best.

But in the RW, what would happen in practice is that these places would automatically be dominated by FF mothers because they are in the majority. And some of them are going to have precisely the hostile view of BF which is part of why BF support cafes are needed in the first place. Which is why unfortunately that idea at this moment in time, would not work. Perhaps in the future it could.