Did you know that breastfeeding in public is perfectly legal in all 50 states? Yup! Even in Kentucky! And you don’t even need to cover up.
Maybe that’s why Sadie Durbin was so shaken up by the response when she tried to feed her baby at a restaurant.
Sadie and her family were at Texas Roadhouse in Louisville for a meal, when her 7-week-old daughter started to fuss.
As babies will do, right? So Sadie did what moms will and should do in that situation — she fed her daughter. That’s when things started to go sideways.
“I latched her on like I always do, and she was nursing for maybe five minutes when I saw the manager coming around the corner, walking fast and shaking his head at me with a napkin in his hands.”
As she told People , he wanted her to use the napkin to cover up while she fed her daughter.
Of course, Sadie was perfectly fine to feed her baby in public and she knew it, and as you can well imagine, Sadie was having none of that.
“He said, ‘Ma’am, ma’am. We’re getting a lot of complaints; we’re going to need you to cover up.’ I said, ‘No, I’m feeding my baby, and I’m well with my rights to feed my baby. I’m not going to cover up.”
The manager persisted but Sadie stuck to her guns, refusing to cover up until the manager put the napkin down and stormed off.
And she adds that she was already fairly discreet in her attempt to feed her daughter in terms of positioning, but because of the logistics of feeding, covering up just wasn’t going to work. “She unlatches as soon as I try to put a cover over her,” she says.
When Sadie caught a glimpse of the manager talking to a woman who was glaring at her, she asked her server about the complaints.
The manager returned to Sadie’s table once more to try to get her to cover up, and her and her husband’s response was to simply leave the restaurant. But when she got home, she was upset enough to write up a Facebook post that went viral overnight.
By the morning, her post had thousands of comments, and unfortunately, they weren’t all positive.
She had to take her post private over some of the threatening messages, but before she did, it had more than 32,000 comments and 34,000 shares, with a surprising amount of hateful messages.
It’s surprising how many sided with the complainer rather than a mother’s right to breastfeed in public.
One said , “Majority of us don’t go to Texas Roadhouse to sit and watch a Mom feeding a baby without a Cover up. It’s called Respect.”
Mind you, most folks came down on Sadie’s side, happy to defend her right to feed her newborn.
And there will be some consequences. A spokesperson told local news the manager would be taking some time off — not fired, and Sadie doesn’t want him fired anyway.
Texas Roadhouse also promised to improve education with the staff.
They also reached out to a local advocacy group for breastfeeding. And although they did reach out to Sadie, they didn’t apologize to her, and she has decided to sue.
“I think it’s my only recourse. There’s a law, but there’s no penalty attached to the law,” she said.
She also wants to raise the awareness around breastfeeding laws, something she does when teaching other area moms about breastfeeding.
It seems Texas Roadhouse learned the hard way with Sadie, so here’s hoping she’s successful, and more moms don’t have to go through the same situation she did.
h/t People
