Deidré and centre baby Clarissa getting some work done at Heretaunga Women’s Centre.
Deidré and centre baby Clarissa getting some work done at Heretaunga Women’s Centre.
OPINION
Boobs, knockers, tits, breasts: whatever you like to call them – surely they are harmless enough, right? What is all the fuss about?
Here at the Heretaunga Women’s Centre naturally enough the subject of breasts comes up from time to time. Whether it’s about health, size or perhaps in this recent heatwave about sweating under or in between them.
Some women would like to be bigger and some would like to go down a size or two. Sometimes the subject is breast health: examinations, cancer, mammograms and surviving without them.
Recently our service development lead was trying to use hers as nature intended which was to feed her baby, and it turns out not all in this world are a lover of this practice if you want to do this in public, no matter how discreet you are being.
It’s not a problem we face here at the Women’s Centre. Here you can bring your baby to work and feed that totally gorgeous child on demand throughout your work day, with lots of love and support all around.
The Heretaunga Women’s Centre, the original Women’s Rest Rooms in Hastings.
And if you’re visiting the centre, which is based in the Hastings Women’s Rest Rooms, we have a nursery with comfortable seats so you can come and feed and change your baby, lots of toys to entertain your other children, have a cuppa and a chat with us or other mums, and check out the noticeboard to see what’s on.
This is of course what the Hastings Women’s Rest was originally designed for. “By the 1910s, there was recognition that women’s access to public spaces was limited, to some extent, by the lack of toilet facilities.”
So a new building was planned to cater for the needs of women, especially mothers. The rooms were named ‘Rest Rooms’ as this was thought to place “less emphasis on women as creatures with a need to urinate or worse and more on women as mothers, as creatures with a need to ‘rest’” (P. Cleaver & C. Cochran Study).
Back to our team member who when holidaying in another province was asked to leave several places when she tried to feed her very hungry baby.
If you are treated unfairly because you are breastfeeding or expressing breast milk, it is a form of sex discrimination under the Human Rights Act.
The act says it is illegal for someone to stop you breastfeeding at work, where you are studying, on public transport, in government departments, in public places, and in restaurants and shops.
This is interesting because of course restaurants and shops would be considered private places but it seems it is likely you cannot discriminate even there.
It led to some discussion at work about breastfeeding in public. Most of us had done this in the past, but only out of necessity. We all preferred a more private space, when possible, but when your babies hungry now - they are hungry now.
We also felt a bit let down by the team, the team of women that is, because both times when our team member was asked to leave with her baby it was by women.
When I googled where you can breastfeed in New Zealand Tairāwhiti, Gisborne, came up as a breastfeeding friendly city. Good on you Tairāwhiti.
This got me to thinking, couldn’t shops and businesses have stickers on the doors saying we are breastfeeding friendly here?
I don’t even have boobs anymore (thanks cancer) but I’d shop there on principal.
But even better - could we get Hawke’s Bay declared as another breastfeeding friendly region? What are your thoughts, Mayor Sandra?
In the meantime if you are looking for somewhere comfy that’s 100 per cent breastfeeding friendly, check out the Women’s Centre in the Women’s Rest Rooms in Hastings – there for breastfeeding mothers since 1921.
