There has to be a limit as to where breast feeding can be done

On October 24, 2008, Longuinho, 32, was chatting with a bunch of other mothers and kids during their weekly, hour-long swim session at AquaCenter Swim school in Newmarket, Ontario when her infant daughter became cranky. Rather than climb out of the warm water in the pool onto the cool deck, out of range of her friends, Longuinho started nursing her infant on the steps leading out of the pool, with her breasts just above the surface of the water.

The operator of the private pool, Ellie Karkouti asked the mother to find a more appropriate location in the building to breast feed her baby. She suggested one of the comfortable chairs in the changing room or somewhere in the viewing gallery.

Ms. Longuinho was not happy with those suggestions and insisted that she would breast feed her baby where she was sitting at that moment, on the steps leading out of the pool.

She then spent the last few minutes swimming with her daughter, then fed her in the change room and, later in her car It was then that she started to think: "What happened was wrong. I knew that, based on the law. I had the right to breastfeed in a public place." She decided that she wants to use this incident as an example for other mothers to show that they should not be afraid of breastfeeding in public, even in a pool.

She decided to ask the Ontario's Human Rights Tribunal to investigate why she was asked to leave the water while breastfeeding her 20-month-old daughter Camilla on the pool steps.

First of all, let me say right now, I am not against mothers breast feeding their infants in public. However, a certain amount of discretion is expected of them.

For example, I would hardly expect a mother to breast feed her infant on the steps leading into a church when the churchgoers are either entering the church or leaving it anymore than I would expect a nursing mother to nurse her infant at the entrance of a school. When my daughters nursed their infants when there was company in the house, they would go into their bedrooms and do it. That is called discretion.

Now obviously, there are instances when a mother has no other choice but to nurse her infant in public, such as when they are on a bus or streetcar or in a subway. But anytime I have seen that happen, the mothers were very discrete.

How discrete is it to nurse an infant on any steps that lead into and out of a building or in and out of a pool where the public is going to be? I would say, not very discrete. Common sense dictates that the nursing of a child in a public place should be done as discretely as possible and if at all possible, somewhere where there is less people around.

For example, if a mother has to nurse her child on the steps of a public building, she could do it at either end of the steps where there is less pedestrian traffic. If she has to do it on a bus, she should choose a window seat if possible to sit in.

There are people who are quietly wondering why breastfeeding still causes such a flood of emotions and how things got so out of control, right in the midst of York Region's "Anytime, Anywhere" breastfeeding campaign.

According to Karkouti, while salt and chlorine reduce dangerous bacteria in a pool, the water's still "filled with stuff that you can't kill – people's pee and sweat and body stuff is in there. Am I ever going to stick my baby's mouth on a breast that's been in a pool without cleaning it first?

Is it safe to breast feed an infant when public pool water is lapping up against a baby’s mouth? After all, there is fecal matter and urine in such pools and although the pools are chlorinated, that doesn’t mean that fresh fecal matter or urine might not contaminate the baby. It wouldn’t contaminate children or adults because their immune systems are in full swing but the immune systems of babies are not.

The Breastfeeding Action Committee of Edmonton urged governments to uniformly adopt breastfeeding-friendly regulations, saying there is no evidence the practice is unsafe for babies, their mothers or others in the pool however, I doubt that they know whether or not new babies aren’t being infected to some degree.

When Longuinho’s friends expressed outrage – and her daughter's former pediatrician stressed there should be "no qualification" on where a mother feeds her child – Longuinho urged them to join her in a "peaceful protest for breastfeeding" at the AquaCenter on November 8th. She says she simply intended to feed her child in the pool. Karkouti hired four security guards who kept the 20 or so protesters, many of them children, at bay. Longuinho wanted to nurse directly in the pool with her supporters giving her encouragement.

I have nothing but contempt for Longuinho. She was making a big thing about nothing especially when you consider what her real reason was for wanting to breast feed her infant on the steps leading out of the pool. According to her, rather than climb out of the warm water onto the cool deck, out of range of her friends, Longuinho started nursing Camilla on the steps.

I am sure that there are chairs on the deck of the pool. She could have left the pool and got into one of the chairs and nursed her infant then. If her friends still wanted to chat with her, they could have gone to the edge of the pool where she was seated.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission says breastfeeding women can't be prohibited from feeding their babies in public, or ordered to move to areas considered more "discreet" but the Ministry of Health sets rules that ban food and drink around pools so it follows that if breastfeeding is allowed, bottles should also be allowed, but so far, they are not.

The way I see it is as follows. If a nursing mother has no other place to breast feed her infant other than where she is, then she should breast feed her infant right there and then. However, if she can do it in a place where she can be discrete without being too inconvenienced by going there, then she should do it in that other place.

Longuinho was not in a bus where she had no other choice but to remain on it. She was in a pool where the public had access and instead of simply getting out of the pool by climbing the steps and walking to a chair nearby, she chose to sit on the steps because the water was warm and her friends were nearby. That, in my mind is dumb.