http://mobile.thestar.com/mobile/NEWS/article/535310
A breastfeeding brouhaha has broken out at a York Region swimming facility.
At one end of Newmarket's AquaCenter Swim School pool is Cinira
Longuinho, who wants Ontario's Human Rights Tribunal to investigate why
she was asked to leave the water Oct. 24 while breastfeeding her
20-month-old daughter Camilla on the pool steps.
At the other end – and drowning in a sea of blogs, emails and protests –
is pregnant AquaCenter owner Ellie Karkouti. She hired four security
guards, not expecting them to show up in bulletproof vests, when
Longuinho and her supporters threatened a "peaceful nursing protest"
last Friday.
In between are a whole bunch of people who are quietly wondering why
breastfeeding still causes such a flood of emotions and how things got
so out of control, right in the midst of York Region's "Anytime,
Anywhere" breastfeeding campaign.
"I believe in breastfeeding, just not in the pool," says pool owner
Karkouti, 39, who is 17 weeks pregnant with her first child. "I gave her
two options. I said I have comfortable chairs in the change room or the
viewing gallery."
According to Karkouti, while salt and chlorine reduce dangerous bacteria
in a pool, the water's still "filled with stuff that you can't kill –
people's pee and sweat and body stuff is in there. Am I ever going to
stick my baby's mouth on a breast that's been in a pool without cleaning
it (first)? Never, ever."
Longuinho, 32, was chatting with a bunch of mothers and kids during
their weekly, hour-long swim session at AquaCenter when her daughter
became cranky. Rather than climb out of the warm water onto the cool
deck, out of range of her friends, Longuinho started nursing Camilla on
the stairs, with her breasts above water.
She claims Karkouti came up to her a few minutes later and gave her one
option: the change room. "I didn't know what to do," says Longuinho. "I
was embarrassed. In reality, I wanted to pretend that nothing had happened."
So she spent the last few minutes swimming with her daughter, then fed
her in the change room and, later, her car, where she started to
realize: "What happened was wrong. I knew that, based on the law, I had
the right to breastfeed in a public place."
Longuinho, who emigrated from Brazil four years ago, says English isn't
her first language and blames that, in part, for what happened next.
When friends expressed outrage – and her daughter's former pediatrician
stressed there should be "no qualification" on where a mother feeds her
child – Longuinho urged them to join her in a "peaceful protest for
breastfeeding" at the AquaCenter last Friday. She says she simply
intended to feed her child in the pool. But then details of the
"protest" hit breastfeeding sites and blogs – and Karkouti's email
inbox. Fearing that dozens of angry lactivists might show up at her
pool, Karkouti contacted York Regional Police.
When it became clear they had no intention of sending uniformed
officers, she says, Karkouti hired $400 worth of her own protection –
four security guards who kept the 20 or so protesters, many of them
children, at bay.
"I guess that's what they come with," Karkouti said yesterday of the
Kevlar-clad guards. "I didn't even notice. All I thought was, `If I have
400 people trying to force their way in, what am I supposed to do?'"
Says Longuinho: "We weren't carrying signs or anything. The idea was to
go and talk to her (Karkouti) and nurse in the pool. One of the guards
even had handcuffs. I believe it was to intimidate us."
Karkouti was so concerned the protest might foul the water, forcing a
costly cleanup or shutdown, she refused to let the group in.
Longuinho is pondering her next move. "What happened was wrong," she
says. "I want to use it as an example for other mothers that they should
not be afraid of breastfeeding, even in a pool."
It's far from the first time a lactating mother has been kicked out of a
pool. After a number of "breastfeeding incidents" at municipal pools
(this pool is privately owned), the Breastfeeding Action Committee of
Edmonton urged governments to uniformly adopt breastfeeding-friendly
regulations, saying there is no evidence the practice is unsafe for
babies, their mothers or others in the pool.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission says breastfeeding women can't be
prohibited from feeding their babies in public, or ordered to move to
areas considered more "discreet." But the Ministry of Health sets rules
that ban food and drink around pools, says Karkouti, and if
breastfeeding is allowed, bottles should also be allowed.
A Ministry of Health official who is aware of this incident couldn't be
reached for comment.
- - -
Morgan
(Who thought the stuff about kevlar coated security guards weilding
handcuffs required the entire article to be copied!)
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