The cruel treatment that many breastfeeding moms suffer has left a lot of moms taking out their frustration on social media in the hopes that such stigma could be resolved in the near future. One case is that of an Ohio mom, Aidan Johnson, who was asked to leave by a staff of a fitness center when she breastfed her eight-month-old baby.
She Knows reported that Johnson was at Premier, a fitness club in Dublin, Ohio, for a meeting, when her eight-month-old baby became hungry. Instinctively, as a breastfeeding mom, she had no qualms of nursing her hungry son at the onsite café.
Thereafter, a staff of the gym asked her over and over again either to cover up or leave, or that she would be accommodated somewhere else. Johnson declined. She instead went home and told her husband about the whole incident.
The story doesn't end there, though. When the angry dad confronted Premier's manager stating that based in Ohio law, breastfeeding moms have the right to breastfeed, instead of getting an apology, he and his wife were branded by Premier's manager as playing "victims." The manager said that they should find another gym if his wife can't cover up.
This wasn't exactly the first time that the manager of the said fitness center faced customer complaints. He had the notoriety of being rude to the gym's customers whenever confronted with complaints. He even said that he was the one who told the staff to ask Johnson to leave the gym's premises.
The cruel treatment Aida Johnson received from Premier gym is not the first of its kind. Every day, many breastfeeding moms complain of the way they are publicly shamed whenever they nurse their babies in public.
One mom, Tracy Gillett, in a Huffington Post article questioned, "Why is society shaming women for nourishing their babies?" To which she added, "Has our world become so artificial we can't appreciate the beauty and innocence of a breastfeeding child?"
For Tracy and most likely for many breastfeeding moms out there, they consider breastfeeding as a gift. She described it as, "Breastfeeding has given me this gift. This gift of connection. Of love and comfort." Breastfeeding is not something women should be ashamed of. It's a noble act that a mom can give to her child.
