Restaurant Manager Actually Tried To Cover Baby While Breastfeeding

Having a newborn can be demanding, having to provide every need at a moment’s notice.

Eating is one of those basic needs. A baby has to eat, when a baby has to eat, no matter where you happen to be at the time.

Breastfeeding mothers have the convenience of having food on hand, but there are those whose skewed sense of decency have a problem with this basic human function and you won’t believe what some people will do about it.

In a Kentucky restaurant, a manager resorted to physically putting something over the helpless baby’s face, who was just doing what babies do best.

Fox News reports:

A Texas Roadhouse restaurant in Louisville, Ky., has apologized to a mother who was asked by a manager to cover up while she was breastfeeding her seven-week-old daughter.”

Babies that young need to be fed more often than older babies, and the mother, Sadie Durban, was just doing what was best for her small child, no matter the convenience.

Durbin and her family were just trying to enjoy a meal together at the popular chain restaurant when a manager approached her, telling her to cover up, according to a Facebook post that went viral.

The mother providing for her infant wrote in the post,

David Mitchell, a manager at the Texas Roadhouse on Shelbyville Road, brought me a napkin and tried lying it over my 7 week old nursing infant’s face as he explained that he had another patron complain and that he really needed me to cover up.”

What nerve of a man, that is a stranger nonetheless, to try and physically put something on the face of a baby!

Writing a Facebook post exposing the manager’s abhorrent behavior is the very least that could be done to bring attention to his insolence. Legal charges could have been looked at as an option for such an act.

“I politely explained to him it is against the law for him to ask me to cover up and that I was well within my rights to feed my baby,” Durbin informed him.

In many states, including Kentucky, there are laws in place to protect breastfeeding mothers and their babies.

The Northern Kentucky Health Department reports on the explicit protections in place:

Kentucky law guarantees that cities, counties and public places don’t ban public breastfeeding. The law prevents breastfeeding in public from being considered an act of public indecency. It also forbids any city or person from restricting a mother from breastfeeding in a location where she is otherwise allowed to be.”

Despite these laws being in place in most areas of the United States, breastfeeding is still chastised by the uninformed and misguided.

After Durbin politely referenced Kentucky state laws that basically made his request void and unconstitutional, he was said to then throw “the napkin down” and “angrily walked away with a huff” when she dismissed his rude request for her to cover her baby feeding, according to the post.

 

As anyone would wonder, Durbin asked who the patrons were that complained about her breastfeeding.

The manager was said to have returned seemingly defensive saying, “Listen lady, I’ve done nothing wrong”, refusing to disclose the alleged complainers.

Writing about the incident on Facebook brought a lot of appropriate negative attention to the restaurant, leaving them no option other than to apologize for the way Durbin and her baby were treated.

Texas Roadhouse issued a formal statement that read,

supports the rights of all mothers to breastfeed their children in public, including in our restaurants…Unfortunately, our manager’s handling of this situation was misguided and wrong,” WDRB reported.

To show that they were serious, Texas Roadhouse hosted a nurse-in at the restaurant in partnership with the Le Leche League.

The managing partner, Jeff White, informed breastfeeding mothers everywhere that they are nursing friendly at their restaurant.

Writing on Facebook, the company stated that they will

use this incident to educate our employees to the rights of nursing mothers as part of our commitment to providing a welcoming and family-friendly dining experience for everyone.”

The manager who put the napkin on the infant’s face took some paid time off, according to WDRB, but was not fired for the incident.

It’s unsure if a vacation was the best form of repercussion for the rude manager, who disregarded Kentucky state laws for his own opinion, but at least the restaurant is taking action to ensure other breastfeeding mothers are treated with respect.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident, and mothers are harassed, chastised, and shamed for simply feeding their babies when the need arises.

Meanwhile, women with low cut shirts and crude sexual speech are dismissed as being members of modern culture.

It is amazing that Durbin brought awareness to her situation, and showed how breastfeeding mothers are just women doing what is best for their children, and need to be treated as such.

Please let us know if you have been mistreated in a public setting for breastfeeding your baby.