Mom Kicked Out Of Nordstrom's Bathroom For Breastfeeding Her Baby

Mom told breastfeeding in the bathroom was making making others uncomfortable

Stories about moms being shamed for breastfeeding in public are sadly all too common. But nursing moms are shamed when they are trying to be discreet about breastfeeding, too. A mom was asked to leave a Nordstrom’s bathroom because she dared to breastfeed her baby in the privacy of the bathroom common space.

Let that sink in for a second.

Utah mom Ana Davis was at Nordstrom with her baby daughter Mia. Mia got hungry, so Davis decided to feed her in the bathroom. To be clear, Davis would have been well within her rights to feed Mia on the floor of the store without a cover if she wanted to, but she decided that she would be more comfortable in the bathroom. “She was crying. She was ready to have her meal, so I went to the restroom and found an open chair,” Davis told WTOL11.

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Typically stories of moms being shamed for breastfeeding in public involve a store employee asking them to go into the bathroom for a feeding, so you’d think that Davis wouldn’t have had a problem, right? Wrong. A few minutes into Mia’s feeding, a Nordstrom employee came up to Davis saying there had been a complaint. “We were approached by a Nordstrom employee who had said a complaint had been made that somebody was feeling uncomfortable … doing their business while there was a nursing mother in the restroom.”

The employee’s solution? They asked Davis to relocate to a changing room and nurse there instead.

Let’s just pause for a second to think about the ridiculousness of this. You’ve got a hungry baby, a mom with a boob out, probably a diaper bag she’s hauling around, possibly a stroller too. But on the basis of a single complaint from an ignorant, pearl clutching idiot you want her to unlatch the baby, put her boob back in, gather up all her stuff (including a hungry baby who’s probably now screaming) and go post up in a changing room? That’s not just illegal, it’s flat out stupid.

“It was a little embarrassing at first,” said Davis. “I didn’t feel like I was doing anything wrong by nursing.” Her husband, Joel Davis didn’t get it either. “It provokes the question, why did it make sense to ask a nursing mother to leave the privacy of a bathroom?” he said. Upset over the incident, the couple reached out the store manager. The manager apologized and said Nordstrom employees would be brought up to speed on public breastfeeding laws.

While the couple is glad that Nordstrom employees will be better informed going forward, they want to spread awareness about breastfeeding laws to everyone, such as the customer who complained about Davis feeding her daughter in the first place. “We as a society are OK with, you know, low-cut shirts or advertisements of underwear models. But a nursing mother, to a lot of people, is just very offensive,” Davis said.

Nordstrom, when it comes to returns your customer service is the best. Let’s do what it takes to make your employee training just as fabulous, yes?