'What has the world come to?' Breastfeeding mum forced to stand on train
A mum says she was made to breastfeed standing up on a train for about half an hour when no one offered to stand up and give her a seat.
Kate Hitchens wrote on her Instagram account she was on her way home from London when her six-month-old needed to be fed.
“What has the world come to that a mother has to stand up on a moving train breast feeding a wriggling and writhing 6 month old, 20lb (9kg) baby?!” she wrote.
Ms Hitchens added she didn’t ask for a seat.
“I felt silly,” she wrote.
“I shouldn’t have to ask. Maybe some people didn’t see. I know for a fact some did; they made eye contact and actually smiled at me.”
Ms Hitchens claims one lady looked up from her book and offered her seat, but another woman took it.
“The lovely lady said ‘Oh excuse me I actually gave up my seat so this lady with a baby could sit down’ the sitting lady shrugged, plugged her earphones in and closed her eyes,” Ms Hitchens wrote.
“I can somewhat understand not offering your seat to someone elderly; perhaps they might be offended you think they look old,” the mum wrote.
“I can understand not offering your seat to someone you suspect might be pregnant; maybe it’s just their time of the month or perhaps they are just naturally curvy and they aren’t pregnant; perhaps you worry you might offend them.
“I cannot get my head around not offering a parent with a child a seat.”
She urged anyone who is “able bodied and fit and healthy” who sees someone with a child on a train to offer their seat.
Her post has received more than 800 likes.
In July, a single Adelaide mum hit back at her critics after revealing she still breastfeeds her seven-year-old son.
Lisa Bridger has breastfed all five of her children for the past 27 years.
But it is the feeding of her two youngest boys, seven-year-old Chase and four-year-old Phoenix, that is proving hard for some to swallow.
The baby was seriously malnourished when the Argentinian officer arrived at the Sister Maria Ludovica Children’s Hospital in Buenos Aires, following reports that the child’s mother was struggling to look after him.
Spotting that staff were overworked, police officer Celeste Ayala asked if she could help hold and then breastfeed the baby, who was described by staff as being “smelly and dirty.”
