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What Do you Think About this...Found it in my Local Paper!!
posted to Newcomers Club - Active discussion
in The CafeMom Newcomers Club
on Jul. 4, 2009 at 4:33 PM
- 47 Replies
- 900 Total Views
Pool staff's action fires up mothers
Lifeguard, manager forbid breast-feeding, prompting a nurse-in
By KATHY ANEY
The East Oregonian
Public protest comes in many forms, but Friday's "nurse-in" at Milton-Freewater's Aquatic Center was anything but typical.
Several women, all nursing mothers, sat poolside and nursed their babies, protesting an incident last weekend when a lifeguard asked a woman to leave the pool area and breastfeed in the locker room instead.
It happened as Christine Magnaghi sat in about an inch of water at the shallow end of the kiddie pool. As she kept one eye on her 2-year-old son Jerome, splashing in the water, she fed baby Levi under a nursing cover.
"I was almost done when I felt a tap on the shoulder," Magnaghi said.
After asking Magnaghi if she was breastfeeding, a lifeguard directed her inside the building. Magnaghi, of Walla Walla, protested.
"State law protects my right to breastfeed in public," she said.
The lifeguard left to retrieve pool manager, Karen Shelton.
Magnaghi asked Shelton, "How would you like to eat your lunch in the bathroom?"
Shelton, Magnaghi said, cited a different segment of Oregon pool law, saying state code requires all food and drink at public pools to stay behind a blue line that marks a four-foot perimeter from pool's edge.
Magnaghi wasn't sure what to think.
Oregon is one of 43 states that allow breastfeeding in any public or private location. If one considers lactation as food and drink, the two laws seem to clash.
Magnaghi went home and logged on the Internet to study the laws, before warning her Facebook friends not to try nursing at the M-F pool. Many joined in her outrage, she said, and advised her to stage a "nurse in."
Friday, Magnaghi and a few others did just that, though most other patrons probably missed the whole low-key poolside affair.
Though she isn't a breastfeeding mom, Cindy Armenta drove from Hermiston to support her sister Kim Alger and the others who participated in the nurse in.
"I felt like it was harassment," she said. "It is society's idea of what breasts are for that caused them to say something to a woman who was breastfeeding."
"I was outraged that they would ask her to go into the bathroom," said Alger, who nursed her son Isaiah. "Their discomfort should not make policy - I have the right to nurse and they have the option not to look."
As they talked, a woman approached Magnaghi, who sat nursing Levi.
Wendy Harris, a Milton-Freewater resident with a season pool pass to the swim center, hotly told Magnaghi that she'd seen Saturday's friction between her and the pool manager. Magnaghi, she said, had treated Shelton rudely and needed to observe the state's food and beverage laws for pools.
"The designated eating area is behind the blue line," she said.
Magnaghi kept her composure during the exchange, but looked slightly shaken as Harris stormed off. Her husband Kevin, she said, had warned her it could get ugly
Later, Harris, who said she breastfed her own children, talked about her main objection - the chance of breastmilk mixing with pool water and possibly exposing swimmers to HIV and hepatitis C.
"Her breastmilk may be pristine, but not everybody's is," she said.
Nurse-in participants stayed well back from the blue line on Friday and pool staff seemed to pay them no mind.
Shelton, the pool manager, declined to further weigh in on the controversy, referring inquiries to Milton-Freewater City Manager Linda Hall. Since city offices were closed Friday, Hall was unavailable for comment.
Magnaghi stayed composed, but adamant, as she nursed Levi under the shade of an umbrella.
"I don't want to be a vigilante or a militant," she said. "I just want people to know the rules."
Replies:
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- by on Jul. 4, 2009 at 7:50 PM
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Quoting spoiled_wife:
As an Oregonian.
I say.
Stay behind the blue line and you're fine.
Communicable diseases can be spread through breast milk..
The rule is in place for public safety and it needs to stay that way..
If you're worried about communicable diseases, stay out of a public pool. If you're worried about communicable diseases from a breastfeeding woman sharing a pool with you, then stay out of general society, because it's a wonder anyone thinking that could be smart enough to open their door, put on a suit properly, and know how to swim.
"...Only the doing of justice is a good enough excuse to be born."
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- by on Jul. 4, 2009 at 7:56 PM
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Quoting elleinad:
Quoting spoiled_wife:
As an Oregonian.
I say.
Stay behind the blue line and you're fine.
Communicable diseases can be spread through breast milk..
The rule is in place for public safety and it needs to stay that way..
If you're worried about communicable diseases, stay out of a public pool. If you're worried about communicable diseases from a breastfeeding woman sharing a pool with you, then stay out of general society, because it's a wonder anyone thinking that could be smart enough to open their door, put on a suit properly, and know how to swim.
How about this then.
If you don't like the rules at the pool. Stay away from the pool.
I personally don't go to a public pool.. Have one of my own.
Rules are rules
Rules are ther for a reason.
The woman wasn't in the pool. She was breast-feeding by the pool... Different circumstances that a woman in the pool swimming.
Trying to make disparaging remarks in order to insult my intelligence shows that you really do not have a congitive thought of your own..
Have a nice day =)
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- by on Jul. 4, 2009 at 8:01 PM
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For the babies health and safety she shouldnt nurse in the water!
How hard is it to just give her lo a snack and feed her baby behind the stinkin blue line??
She said "would you eat in the bathroom" NO BUT I certainly wouldnt eat while swimming either!!
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- by on Jul. 4, 2009 at 8:02 PM
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Quoting spoiled_wife:
Quoting elleinad:
Quoting spoiled_wife:
As an Oregonian.
I say.
Stay behind the blue line and you're fine.
Communicable diseases can be spread through breast milk..
The rule is in place for public safety and it needs to stay that way..
If you're worried about communicable diseases, stay out of a public pool. If you're worried about communicable diseases from a breastfeeding woman sharing a pool with you, then stay out of general society, because it's a wonder anyone thinking that could be smart enough to open their door, put on a suit properly, and know how to swim.
How about this then.
If you don't like the rules at the pool. Stay away from the pool.
I personally don't go to a public pool.. Have one of my own.
Rules are rules
Rules are ther for a reason.
The woman wasn't in the pool. She was breast-feeding by the pool... Different circumstances that a woman in the pool swimming.
Trying to make disparaging remarks in order to insult my intelligence shows that you really do not have a congitive thought of your own..
Have a nice day =)
Regarding cognitive thought, the comment wasn't directed toward you. It was towards anyone that thinks you can get HIV through a breastfeeding mother entering the same pool as you.
"...Only the doing of justice is a good enough excuse to be born."
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- by on Jul. 4, 2009 at 8:05 PM
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i think that the lifeguard should have told her to just go behind the blue line, not go indoors. she had every right to argue with him, and i would have too. but the whole "spreading diseases" thing is taking it too far. there are way too many people spitting, peeing, being on their period, sometimes bleeding, and god knows what else in public pools for someone to worry about breastmilk.
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- by on Jul. 4, 2009 at 8:08 PM
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I guess if that is considered "food" then she should of stayed behind the blue line out of the pool...at least that isn't the bathroom and she would still be outside watching her children play in the pool. I don't agree with having to breastfeed in a bathroom, but I agree with the staying behind the blue line deal, even though it's milk.
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- by on Jul. 4, 2009 at 9:08 PM
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With it being "allowed" to BF in public..yes she should have just stayed behind the blue line in the first place.
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