When you drop your kids off at daycare , you’re expecting them to care for your children as if they were their own.
However, that line got a bit blurry when one mother’s child got breastfed by a daycare employee without consent.
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With no laws against this, that mother sought out to ensure it never happens to another child.
July 2018 is a month Stephanie Hanna wishes she could forget.
The mom was doing what she normally does: picking her 15-month-old son, Westley, from Happy Kids Pre-school & Daycare in Shingle Springs, California.
But that day quickly became unlike any other when she spotted two of her son’s teachers talking at the end of the hall.
“He’s obsessed with boobs!” one teacher reportedly said to the other.
While they both laughed, they hesitated the moment they saw Stephanie approach. Then, they told Stephanie what had happened.
“Okay, I was feeding [my baby] and he [Westley] was staring at me so I was like, ‘Well, just stick it in there and see what he does.’”
The teacher waited for Stephanie to react and then continued.
“He had some on his lip and was like [licked her bottom lip slowly], but he liked it!” the teacher said.
Stephanie was at a loss for words.
“Then they both looked at me, to which I tried to act as normal as possible, because I was so shocked by what she had just told me,” she told CafeMom .
“So I continued signing Westley out and then looked up and said to them, ‘Well, he likes food …”
This caused the other teacher to burst out laughing and say,
“He’s gonna grow up liking brown women and not know why!” while walking away.”
The entire incident was so jarring, she didn’t know how to react.
She also had a history with these women — they had looked after her older, daughter, Josie from age two to kindergarten.
To be clear, Stephanie isn’t against breastfeeding; she breastfed both of her children.
What she *does* have a problem with is someone breastfeeding her son without consent.
“I felt violated and disturbed by the sexual comments made about the incident, and that this teacher told me she put her breast in my son’s mouth, he ingested her breast milk, and acted like it was totally fine,” Stephanie said.
After consulting her mother and husband, she decided to file a complaint with the daycare director.
They never got back to her. When she spoke with the assistant director, she was shocked by their response.
“She can’t speak English very well and probably mixed up her words and didn’t mean to say that to you,” Hanna claimed she was told.
“I responded that this teacher could speak English perfectly fine and that I had been speaking to her the past few years.”
When she finally heard from the director and daycare owner, the director yelled, “It accidentally squirted in his mouth!”
This was the final straw. Stephanie and her husband filed a report with the state licensing board and removed their son from daycare.
When the police got involved, the mother was shocked and disgusted to learn that there is no law against breastfeeding someone else’s child.
This led her with one option: file a civil suit against the daycare center. During the deposition, the teacher shared more news that was shocking.
She shared that she frequently breastfed in the classroom without a cover on three times per day. This meant regularly exposing her breasts with small children in the room.
The teacher claimed that Westley would walk over and watch intently as this happened.
Since he seemed curious, the other teacher picked up Westley that one day and put him next to the breastfeeding woman.
This, allegedly, is when breast milk “accidentally squirted” in his mouth.
As it stands, the civil litigation is still ongoing.
In the meantime, Stephanie has created a Change.org petition with the goal of making breastfeeding another parent’s child without their consent illegal.
As for Stephanie, she’s still living the ordeal emotionally.
“I still wake up for hours every night thinking about it and reliving it.”
I truly can’t imagine what this must have been like for her. I’m sure it was traumatizing.
“I don’t feel ready to trust my son with anyone besides his grandparents until he can tell us if something happens to him,” she said.
“And I will likely never trust anyone enough to place him, or any future children we may have, in a day care or preschool ever again.”
Now, we want to hear from you.
What do you think about this whole situation?
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