Today the whole family went on a shopping trip to Westboro, which is a trendy neighbourhood in Ottawa filled with upscale cafes and fancy boutiques along a “main street” type road. Sir Monkeypants pulled the van into a spot along the street in a spectacularly amazing feat of parallel parking. I don’t mind saying it was pretty hot.
Anyway, the Wee One was hungry, so Sir Monkeypants took the older two kids up the road to the shop we were heading for, while I stayed behind in the van to breastfeed. I climbed into the back seat of the van and lifted the Wee One out of her car seat, and got into position. Then I went to close the sliding door on the van, but at the last second I remembered that we have the child locks activated, so if I closed myself into the back seat, I wouldn’t be able to get out without climbing into the front seat. It was cold and rainy, so I didn’t want to take the Wee One outside so I could move to the front seat, and besides, I thought it would be nice to have a little air. So I left the sliding door open and started to nurse, draping my raincoat over and around me for privacy.
After I’d started feeding, I realized that the van was parked directly in front of a little cafe (Three Bakers And A Bike). In the cafe, a middle aged man, maybe about 55, was sitting reading the paper, and he could see right into the van through the open doorway of the cafe. But I’m not embarrassed at all about feeding my kid, and I felt like I was being fairly discreet, in that I wasn’t flashing him a boob or anything.
But after a couple of minutes, he says to the girl working behind the counter…
Him: I didn’t really want to see that.
Her: Yeah, I know, she’s breastfeeding.
Him: Why can’t they take that somewhere else? People are eating here.
Her: I know! She could at least close the car door so we wouldn’t have to see it.
And they went on in this vein for the whole time I was feeding the Wee One, about how horrible it was and how shameful, and how rude of me, and how I had totally ruined his eating experience. I felt terrible, so upset and almost like crying. I rushed the Wee One through her feeding and quickly put her back in her car seat, so I could run away and join at the store down the block.
On one hand, I feel like nursing is a natural thing, and that they were wrong to make me feel so sad about it. I think if I had been an actual customer, sitting in the cafe, and decided to nurse at my table, the girl working at the cafe would not have felt comfortable asking me to stop, or to take it elsewhere. But she felt perfectly fine saying that what I was doing was inappropriate, when I was sitting in my own car, and other than the fact that they could see that I was nursing, they couldn’t really see any naughty bits or anything like that.
But on the other hand, I’ve felt like they’ve felt, like, hey, there’s a breast there!, and been unable to look at anything else. And I probably should have had a look around before starting the feed and moved to the front seat, so I could close the car door.
Either way, I feel pretty crappy about the whole thing. I need a hug and a big bowl of ice cream.
TurtleHead 
Those cafe people are assholes! Yes, there’s a breast under your coat but as you say, it’s not like you were flashing everyone. Breasts exist under clothes all the time and everyone seems capable of digesting food in their presence. I know it’s uncomfortable for some people but they were wrong, wrong, wrong for making you feel bad about feeding your child!
What complete and utter assholes! You have absolutely nothing to feel badly about. I am shocked and incensed that such rude and insensitive behavior should be perpetrated towards a breastfeeding woman in this day and age without anyone saying something in your defense. Especially in Westboro, which would be the last place I would expect such narrow views. They have a MEC and a One Thousand Villages within a block of each other for gods’ sakes! You certainly wouldn’t hear comments like that in the Glebe.
I say you keep doing what you’re doing and don’t you give a sweet fuck about anyone who says different! I have half a mind to march down to that cafe and tell them off myself!
Okay! So I am not crazy! I feel better, thanks :).
I know! I found it ironic that the very area of Westboro we were in was the section of the strip devoted to fancy baby and maternity clothing. You’d think they would see nursing mothers all the time in their cafe!
Plus, just last week I was in a similar situation — nursing in the car with the door ajar for a little air — but outside a McDonald’s, where you might expect a less open-minded clientel…but when the family who was parked next to me came out of the restaurant and caught me nursing in plain view, all they did was gush over the baby and talk about how beautiful we were.
Thanks so much for your comment, I feel better!
And to think DK and I are considering moving to Westboro because we thought it was a more open-minded part of the city than where we live now! Bah!
One 55 year old guy, and an agreeable storekeeper do not make an entire neighborhood prudish and rude.
That said, if you really want to live in an open-minded community, move further west – say coastal California.
and if you’re on Facebook, join the Breastfeeding in Public group. I just joined to support the cause!
Man, people are just so uptight about breasts, and nakedness in general. Isn’t this 2007? Didn’t the Victorian age end, oh, like about 100 years ago? There are just so many more important things to get upset about — I just don’t get this.
The jerks at the cafe could just look away if he’s offended. Actually, if he or the cafe people had asked you to cover up or leave it would have been an infringement on your civil rights. I was looking up what I should expect my employer to provide in terms of a nursing (pumping) room and storage for when I go back to work and found that in Ontario, at least, you have the right to breastfeed anywhere without anyone asking you to cover up. You could have almost had a winning lawsuit on your hands.
I would have confronted the jerks (only, perhaps, had you not been alone.)
Here’s what the Ontario Human Rights Code states (http://ohrc.on.ca/english/guides/pregnancy-breastfeeding.shtml):
“You have rights as a nursing mother. For example, you have the right to breastfeed a child in a public area. No one should prevent you from nursing your child simply because you are in a public area. They should not ask you to “cover up”, disturb you, or ask you to move to another area that is more “discreet”.”
Furthermore, you were in your vehicle, so you weren’t even in “public”.
Your experience just makes me so upset!
Do it! You’d be closer to us and clearly Westboro needs more enlightented inhabitants.
Huh, I had no idea that this was actually a law. I’m really happy to hear that the government has gotten with the times, even if it is a bit harder for some other people!
I feel better knowing that everyone else is outraged as well. I was actually worried that everyone would come down on the side of the guy in the cafe. Crazy, huh!