A breastfeeding mother from Ottawa was in Starbucks grabbing a coffee to go when her child became hungry. Julia Wykes stepped out of the line at Starbucks and sat down to nurse her baby. The situation played out almost as it often does : A middle-aged woman became irritated at Wykes for breastfeeding in public. The woman spoke loudly to a Starbucks’ barista asking, “Could you get that woman to stop doing that in public? It’s disgusting.” Recently, a breastfeeding mom was called a slut for nursing her baby in a public cafe.
Though no one but the middle-aged woman had noticed Wykes breastfeeding her baby, the customers in Starbucks suddenly were now aware of the breastfeeding-in-public situation. The barista, a young man, told the upset customer that he would take care of it. He walked over to where Wykes was breastfeeding her baby and changed the ending of the typical breastfeeding-in-public story, which often results in public “nurse-ins.”
Instead of asking the mother to use the bathroom or breastfeed her child somewhere else, he offered her a free refill and handed her a voucher for a free coffee. Then, the young man offered his apologies, “I’m sorry you had to deal with such unpleasantness today.”
Wykes told Huffington Post , “She kind of defeated her own purpose, because she was the only one who had noticed I was breastfeeding, and she ended up calling much more attention to it than if she hadn’t said anything!” Wykes said that the woman who had complained about her breastfeeding in Starbucks quickly left in a tantrum.
Starbucks did confirm the authenticity of the breastfeeding mom’s story. The teen Starbucks’ employee gained the adoration of breastfeeding supporters across the world, because Wykes went home and wrote about the experience on a Facebook breastfeeding group. She told the group, “If you’re ever at Starbucks in Trainyards (Ottawa), give them a good tip!”
SheKnows reported that the mother wrote of the Starbucks’ employee, “To have a young man be more kind and informed than a middle-aged woman who may have had children herself was a shock. And while it may be a huge multinational company, I am glad that such a positive experience occurred in a Starbucks, it shows that they employ good people.”
Though the laws across the United States are often vague, most states allow public breastfeeding. Breastfeeding in Ontario, where the Starbucks is located, is also fully legal.
[Photo by Jem Grismshaw on Daily Cloudt ]
