Where can I breastfeed in public?
You can nurse your baby in public anywhere. There are places that we teach moms, sort of a getting started place, sort of learning how to nurse in public. I know this is going more national, for instance there are some department stores like Nordstrom. We have to give a plug to Nordstrom, because they were one of the first places to make a lounge for women and we have to applaud them. It's comfortable, away from the toilets and it has a changing area, nice comfortable couches, it's terrific. Some other places are following suit, or there's a family area in the shopping centre where there's a place for little kids and mothers to breast feed, couches, changing tables. So those kinds of places are good places to start. If you want to eat out, if you want to go out in public we suggest that you call the restaurant, pick a noisy place, pick a place that isn't a very, very high upscale place where you're all alone and it's too quiet. Start with those kinds of places. Nursing in a booth is much easier sometimes than in the centre of the room. So we suggest calling the restaurant and saying, “Hi we're coming to your restaurant tonight” or “we'd like to and we have a young baby who is nursing. Do you have a booth or anything like that to make it easier for us?” See what the response is from the restaurant. We actually released a list, as you would put an A on a restaurant for a good place to eat, we had a list of A places for breastfeeding and we actually sent that list to the restaurants and said you've been named as a great place to breastfeed your baby. So for people that want to promote a good family business, that's really a positive thing to do. So if the mother can gets a negative feeling from the restaurant they go to, then you say “I'll go somewhere else, thanks though” and stay very positive and go somewhere else. We kind of have women training each other on how to breastfeed in public; they'll tell each other, here's where I went and it was great.
