Nationwide Nurse-In Against Public Breastfeeding Discrimination

This Friday, April 24,2015, will mark the beginning of an annual event that brings breastfeeding mothers and supporters together at their individual state capitals to bring awareness to public breastfeeding laws that are being broken daily. The purpose of the event is to make mothers aware of the laws that are already in place and stand up against breastfeeding bullies.

Last year the organizer, Laura Delmonico, joined a BFMT outlet for mothers to share their incidents of breastfeeding discrimination and gain support from fellow breastfeeding moms and supporters. She was “shocked” to see daily posts of discrimination in the group and decided it was time for this to stop. Delmonico clearly states on her public event page that it is not only about trying to normalize nursing in public, but more importantly, bringing attention to public breastfeeding laws to put an end to public breastfeeding discrimination.

During a phone interview, Laura shared her personal experience:

“I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, it’s a very liberal area right at the foothills of Colorado’s flatirons. I didn’t know that public breastfeeding was controversial or that anyone would have a problem with a woman breastfeeding in public because growing up, I saw it everywhere! It was normal for me to see women nursing their 1,2,3,4 year olds. My preschool teacher even breastfed her baby at our school. I’m the youngest of 3 in my family and mother breastfed all of us so I grew up knowing that, that’s how babies are fed! It was very shocking to me when I learned that so many people had a problem with women feeding babies.”

Delmonico has gone to great lengths to see that this event will be a great success. With about 6 months of planning, she has created a list of states with individual groups where mothers and supporters can find information about attending the event in the local area. In the past month, she has used social media to connect with larger breastfeeding groups to help publicize the event and seek support in managing the local groups. Jill DeLorenzo has published the official national press release for the Nationwide Nurse-In and Laura is taking these final days to make the attendees aware of the official rules of this peaceful protest.