Wow. It has been over a year since I have posted. I am ready to get back to blogging. I have quite a few posts ready to go as well as an update on the Aquacentre Newmarket situation.

Please stand by.

Obviously, I have taken some time off from blogging. I have some plans to revamp the site up a bit, do some housekeeping, and I am looking into getting my own domain.

I also want to keep my creative juices flowing and while the incident at the Newmarket Aquacentre certainly had a lot of interest and a lot of press, I am looking forward to focusing on other things related to breastfeeding (although I will still bring updates on the Aquacentre case as they become available).

Please bear with me as I work out kinks and work on fixing up this blog!

I have seen this in a few places and someone on one of the groups I belong to alerted the group to it.  I find it very powerful!  For all of the people who wonder why people fight for breastfeeding discrimination, the following poem/article says it all.  I am not sure who authored it, but whoever you are, thank-you!

If a woman breastfeeds with her whole breast out of the shirt, there’s someone in the room wishing she would pull the shirt down a little more.

If she pulls her shirt down a little more, there’s someone in the room wishing she would put a blanket over her side boob, or cleavage.

If she blankets her boob, there’s someone wishing she would put the blanket over the baby’s head.

If she blankets her baby, there’s someone wishing she was in the corner.

If she moves to the corner, there’s someone wishing she would face the wall.

If she faces the wall, there’s someone wishing she would leave the room.

Can’t please ‘em all, so do what feels right to YOU, I say. But regardless of how you do it, keep nursing, ladies.

I am a fan of a really great blog called phdinparenting.  This month, she is blogging everyday and has asked for reader feed back.  I have really enjoyed her recent post on Friendship and Parenting Styles.

This is something that I struggle with.  Most of my friends parent differently than I do, but I see a great sense of love and respect for their children.  I think we are similar in some areas and different in others, but in the areas that matter, we are generally in sync.  Although I know a few people who have used CIO, they know I disagree, and I think for most, it was generally a “last resort”.  I luckily do not know any spankers.

The difficult thing for me are random people in my day to day life.  People who feel that they can make comments on my children such “you are ruining him” when I told a mother at a birthday party (who I had just met) that I hold my (then) 2 month old son most of the time.  Ruining him. 

And then of course there are the people who have now started on the “time to get that kid to wean” train.  I never tell people “time to stop with the bottle” so it always makes me wonder why people feel it’s ok to tell people to stop nursing.

I find it difficult to find fully like-minded parents in today’s society.  I was at a parenting group and one new mother told the group how her husband was more firm than her with letting the baby cry so it wouldn’t manipulate them.  The baby was three weeks old.  I do not think that this mother was in any way attempting to do her child harm – at all – I think that society has us trained to believe that babies are manipulative and need to trained.  That’s unfortunate.

I have had a few comments on my blog and read a few comments where people are interesting in the “public backlash” that will occur when the HRC rules in Cinira’s favour.  Apparently because the “public” (defined by responses on a few newspaper articles) is not in favour of breastfeeding in a pool, or public breastfeeding in general, this should be a big deal.

I do not actually care if people are offended by public breastfeeding because there is a really simple recourse – that person can look away.  If the sight of a nursing mother so offends someone and they fear that their teenager will become aroused or whatever, then maybe the problem is not the nursing mother, but the person.

If people are against nursing in pools, then don’t swim when a mother is nursing.  I bet most people will never see a nursing mom in a pool.

The simple fact remains that a breastfeeding mother cannot be discriminated against.

That’s it.

I missed a day of blogging for a personal reason.

I love having this blog – it has always been a dream of mine to blog and I love being able to blog about breastfeeding and chat with like minded people and read other blogs.  I also like the debate aspect that this Newmarket breastfeeding discrimination at the Aquacentre has brought.  It makes me think and learn.

I need to clarify a few things for people and I hope that those who are reading my blog read this:

1.  I am not Cinira, the mother who was discriminated against, nor am I part of the group of people who went to the Aquacentre to exercise their rights to breastfeed.  I am a supporter of Cinira though.  She was discriminated against and I would like her to have justice for that.

2.  This is my blog.  I love that all sorts of people read and comment and I have never censored any comments or not allowed any comments as of now, but I am tired of reading comments telling me to “get a life” or generally attacking.  You may disagree completely with what is going up but consider the fact that you are coming to a breastfeeding blog.  Also please be respectful here.

Thank-you.

ETA:  I have now had to edit a comment.  Edits will be bolded.  Please keep personally attacking and insulting people out of comments.

Nursing your baby: Not cool in the pool?

It has been clear this entire time that Ellie Karkouti, the owner of the Newmarket Aquacentre has been in the wrong regarding telling a nursing mother to leave the pool a few weeks ago. 

The Globe and Mail has done a fantastic job reporting on this issue, where they quote a Newmarket town official, a doctor in infections from Mt. Sinai as well as other experts.

Good for Cinira, the nursing mother, for taking a stance in this issue.  I wish her well as she takes this case all the way!

Health: BREASTFEEDING

November 13, 2008

Canadians have grown accustomed to the sight of breastfeeding moms at coffee shops, libraries and shopping malls. But what about in an indoor pool?

When a mother was asked to stop breastfeeding her 20-month-old daughter in a Newmarket, Ont., swimming pool last month, the case sparked an uproar that pitted breastfeeding advocates against those who can’t get past the ick factor in that setting.

The mother, Cinira Longuinho, is asking the Ontario Human Rights Commission to investigate whether her right to breastfeed was violated. The pool owner, Ellie Karkouti, says she was concerned for the baby’s health and the health of other swimmers.

Some jurisdictions in Canada have pool safety regulations that group breast milk and baby vomit among the body fluids that can cause a pool to be shut down for cleaning.

In Newmarket, there is no municipal policy banning mothers from breastfeeding in pools, town spokeswoman Wanda Bennett says.

Women are encouraged to breastfeed anywhere they like, she said.

Trying to keep breastfeeding women out of pools, whether backed up by policy or not, may stem from the fact that pools are wet environments and thus widely considered a breeding ground for bacteria, says Allison McGeer, director of infection control at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital. But Dr. McGeer and other health experts say there is no cause for concern for the breastfed child or the swimmers.

Breastfeeding in a pool doesn’t increase children’s exposure to bacteria, since they’ve presumably already been submerged in the water, Dr. McGeer says. Healthy toddlers encounter bacteria everywhere they go and in their food, she adds. “You are counting on the chlorination of our public pools, there’s no doubt about it. That’s important.”

And the chlorine itself isn’t much of a concern, says Madeleine Harned, a lactation consultant at BC Children’s Hospital who said she would not advise mothers in her care against breastfeeding in a pool. “There’s chlorine in tap water.”

Gideon Koren, director of the Motherisk program at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, says any arguments about a baby’s welfare used to ban a woman from breastfeeding in a pool are based on “pseudoscience.” And, “when people use pseudoscience to make scientific arguments, it becomes very suspicious. It’s very aggressive nonsense.”

As for the fear that the breast milk itself may contaminate pool water, Dr. McGeer dismisses the idea. Unlike urine and excrement, breast milk is sterile. “A little bit of breast milk getting into the pool is not an issue,” she says.

And baby spit-up is no different from the saliva that routinely gets in the pool, according to Dr. McGeer. While a baby vomiting in a pool may be gross – “I can see us not wanting to see it,” she says – it’s not infectious. It has little bacterial growth in it, she says.

When it comes to blood-borne illnesses that may be carried by the mother, Dr. McGeer says HIV-positive mothers are discouraged from breastfeeding and a mom with hepatitis B would only be infectious if her breasts were cracked and bleeding into the breast milk. In that case, regulations prohibiting swimming with open sores would presumably apply.

Instead, experts say, this case highlights a lingering difficulty with public breastfeeding.

“When push comes to shove, we still have trouble with breasts in public. We know we shouldn’t, but we do,” Dr. McGeer says.

http://www.cbc.ca/video/popup.html?http://www.cbc.ca/ondemand/newsatsix/toronto.asx

If you click on the above and go to 19 minutes and 35 seconds, you can see the story.  The owner essentially shoots herself in the foot here – she claims no discrimination but the very act of asking the nursing mother to move is discrimination.  As for the owners claim about bowel movements or spitting up – the same can be said of any baby at any time.  Having Laura from Caledon, who already won a similar case at the Human Rights Tribunal (in addition to the other cases posted about here), it becomes more and more clear that this was an act of discrimination.  And now the public is seeing it as well.

Poolside Breast Feeding Leads To Huge Controversy

Citytv is also carrying the story.  There is also a link to a video to watch.

Wednesday November 12, 2008

CityNews.ca Staff

A Newmarket pool owner dipped her toe into a controversial issue when she banned a woman who was breast feeding her child from the private facility.

Cinira Longuinho, 32, claims she was sitting on the steps of the pool, which are covered with water but are not completely submerged. She had been encouraged by her doctor to feed her 20-month-old daughter breast milk, and knew it was within her legal right to do so in public.

She didn’t think much of feeding Camilla, and that’s why she says she was stunned when she was asked to cover up October 24.

“This lady came and she said that she was the owner and had a complaint and for me to use the change room to breast-feed,” explains Longuinho.

“I was very surprised, very shocked about all that and didn’t know what to do so I stopped breast-feeding.”

But she didn’t understand the decision, and she didn’t feel right about it. So she took her complaint against the AquaCenter Swim Pool and Ellie Karkouti to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

“Breast-feeding is like something that since my childhood I always dreamed about when I had a baby I would breast-feed her,” she described.

However, Karkouti, who is pregnant herself, said it was not the act of breast feeding, but a sanitary issue.

In fact, she even put a sign (below) up outside the facility.

“You’re not supposed to obviously urinate in the pool. If you have an open cut or a sore you’re not supposed to go in the pool. So a bodily fluid is a bodily fluid,” she argued.

“The mother should not be allowed to do that,” Karkouti added.

She proposed a compromise, saying nursing mothers could feed their babies as long as they were six feet back from the open water.  But she says Longuinho and her supporters didn’t agree to that, so she has banned them from the centre.

That’s fine with Longuinho. When asked if she would ever go back, she said, “no, I don’t think so.”

Karkouti does plan to breastfeed, just not in a pool.

 

Find out what the Ontario Human Rights Commission has to say about breastfeeding 

Lack Of Funding Threatens To Close Respected Toronto Breastfeeding Clinic

All over the news right now are stories on the breastfeeding discrimination that took place a few weeks ago at the Aquacentre in Newmarket, Ontario.  As this story gains significant media attention, I have noticed a few things.

1.  People are very hung up on the concept of “being discreet”.  Being discreet is not the issue and has never been the issue and will never be the issue.  Whether you (proverbial you) like it or not, breastfeeding is a protected right under the Ontario Human Rights Code.  If mom takes off her top, or covers her baby with a blanket, it makes zero difference.  Breastfeeding women cannot be discriminated against.

2.  People are under the impression that the mother, Cinira L., was breastfeeding in the pool (as in fully submerged with her baby under the water).  Besides being impossible, it’s ridiculous.  It has been shown several times that breastmilk will not contaminate the water in any way.  As for the people who are so concerned about Cinera’s child ingesting pool water, I sincerely hope that they do not take their children to public pools – ever – because all children ingest water, through their skin, eyes, mouth, etc, while swimming.

3.  Lactivists do not advocate for breastfeeding in cars or in the middle of a highway.  To compare breastfeeding in a pool to taking your baby out of a moving car and driving with the baby breastfeeding on your lap is not only ridiculous but insulting as well.

To sum up the laws, I have found an excellent post on breastfeeding123.com.  Angela White, a lawyer and breastfeeding counselor, discusses the laws in Ontario and in Canada on this issue.   She also shows people what to do if they are discriminated against.  She states:

Section 10(2) The Ontario Human Rights Code specifies:

The right to equal treatment without discrimination because of sex includes the right to equal treatment without discrimination because a woman is or may become pregnant.

R.S.O. 1990, c. H.19, s. 10 (2).

The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) developed a Policy on Discrimination Because of Pregnancy and Breastfeeding (PDF document) which further explains the law and its interpretation and implementation. It clarifies that the protections for pregnancy include the post-natal period, which includes breastfeeding. The policy statement elaborates:

You have rights as a nursing mother. For example, you have the right to breastfeed a child in a public area. No one should prevent you from nursing your child simply because you are in a public area. They should not ask you to “cover up”, disturb you, or ask you to move to another area that is more “discreet”.

There are also protections on the federal level. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms specifies:

15(1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age, or mental or physical disability.

INFACT Canada explains what women can do if they have been harassed for breastfeeding:

Report the incident to the Human Rights Commission in your province. As commissions don’t handle many complaints about breastfeeding, individual officers may be unfamiliar with the issue and require some explanation of why this is discrimination, or why the provision of an alternative place to breastfeed is not enough. Be persistent. Contact a women’s rights organization, La Leche League or other group for help and support if you feel you are not being heard.

According to the OHRC website, complaints are now to be filed directly with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.

 

Some people ask, “why do you even care” or “what’s the big deal about being discreet”?  I think that those are good questions.  The big deal is that no two women are built the same and no two babies are built the same.  While one woman may be fully able to nurse her baby with no part of her body showing, the same may be quite difficult for another woman.  Since it is impossible to actually define “discreet” or “common sense”, it is important for everyone to know that women are fully protected and able to breastfeeding without discrimination in public. 

And for all the people who are so offended and worried about maybe seeing a small part of a woman’s breast while she is nursing, I have a great suggestion – look elsewhere!

Check out the article I wrote for Wild Parenting on the subject of nursing covers and don’t forget to enter the contest that ends today!