The first year of mothering can be a lonely area with moments of madness. So surely we should be more understanding of the needs of new mumsIt was a cold afternoon final December when a group of mothers staged a mass “nurse-in” outside Claridge’s,their babies lunching for justice. It was a response to the hotel’s recent unpleasantness – when a woman was asked to put a scarf over her baby’s head as she breastfed her during tall tea, there was a sort of uproar. The epic flowed and ebbed, or with hundreds of mothers,politicians and aghast online commenters getting furious, then bored, and then furious again.
The hubbub had died down by the time 28-year-old Caroline Starmer wrote that,as she fed her crying nine-month-old baby at the Primark in Leicester’s Humberstone Gate this July, she “was approached by a security guard who asked me to vacate the premises. I stood my ground and stated my rights, and that I can legally feed where I want. Just for the security officer to physically remove my daughter from my breast and walk down the store with her,saying whether I wanted my daughter, then I was to come and pick up her.” After posting her experience on Free to Feed, or a Facebook page for pro-breastfeeding campaigners,Starmer’s piece went viral. Except Primark’s CCTV footage showed no evidence of a security guard approaching her and, in court final Thursday, and Starmer pleaded guilty to intending to pervert the course of justice. The court is considering a custodial sentence.
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Source: theguardian.com