It’s that time of the year again… time for a new season of “A Mother’s View from the Pool.” Last year I kvetched about kids wearing Crocs in the pool, babies wearing teeny-weeny bikinis, and parents, who use lifeguards as their personal babysitters, while they chat on their cellphones, read their rag mags, and work on their tans.
This year we are fortunate not to have to make the daily drive to our local city pool. By a rare stroke of luck the fees we pay to live around here were actually used to fund something worthwhile (besides snow removal): Construction of a new neighborhood pool. Now, instead of loading the car with pool paraphernalia, all I have to do is make like a pack mule and stroll less than 5 minutes down the street while my part fish/part preschooler screams: “Moooooooooomy huuuuuuuuurrrrry!!”
Prior to the pool’s opening, each resident was given a long list of rules we would need to adhere to should we want to return in the future. I thought about those rules the other day when I heard about a mom from the UK who was recently given the boot when she whipped out her boob and started to breastfeed her baby at her local pool.
Laura Whotton of Nottingham was reportedly “rebuked” when she tried to nurse her infant son while watching her older child swim. According to reports, the multi-tasking mother didn’t want to let either one of her boys down, so she decided to expose “the girls” and let her baby breastfeed while keeping a watchful eye on her older son while he swam in the pool.
Apparently, her decision didn’t sit well with pool authorities, who informed her that breastfeeding was not allowed at the John Carroll Leisure Centre. The report doesn’t say whether Whotton was using a towel or other type of “hooter hider” to discreetly shield her snacking son. Regardless, Whotton was clearly upset that she was told to cover up.
“People in bikinis were showing more skin and breast than I was,” Whotton told local news reporters.
The breastfeeding advocate also noted that the incident “could put people off from going swimming,” since they wouldn’t be allowed to bring their infants with them.
I think that’s being a bit overdramatic, but still, enough people sided with Whotton that the City Council amended its rules regarding poolside noshing in order to accommodate future breastfeeders.
So the story has a happy ending… for breastfeeding moms, anyway. And it got me thinking; on a typical summer’s day, who traditionally escorts children to public pools? In my experience, good ol’ mom is placed on swim patrol, and most mothers I know could care less if one of their peers had to briefly expose a private part to quiet their screaming child. For that matter, I don’t know many men who would complain about seeing a woman’s breast at the pool.
What do you think about moms breastfeeding at public pools?
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A Mother’s View from the Pool-Bikinis on Babies?
A Mother’s View from the Pool: Why are you Wearing Crocs in the Water?
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