Breastfeeding mum asked to leave the gym despite it being legal
“They wanted to make sure they were accommodating me, to make sure I was comfortable, asked if I wanted to move to a different room.”
After working out, Aidan Johnson sat down at a table in her gym’s cafe to meet a friend. While waiting she decided to feed her eight-month-old baby. “Nobody that I know of looked at me. I didn't make a big show of it,” said the Ohioan mother.
And yet the gym’s general manager approached her, and under the guise of looking after her, asked her to leave.
“They wanted to make sure they were accommodating me,” Aidan said, “make sure I was comfortable, asked if I wanted to move to a different room.”
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Not wanting to compromise her right to breastfeed, she declined. "I'm doing what is biologically a necessity for my son and it shouldn't be looked at anything than that."
She called her husband Adam for reinforcement, who then talked to the general manager.
Nobody actually complained about it, said the manager, but he saw that people were throwing his wife looks and making comments about it.
Adam then asked the manager if he knew Ohio laws on breastfeeding. The manager said, “no, what is it?”
Ohio law states a mother can breastfeed her baby in any place that mums can be.
Aidan received an outpouring support for her decision to stand up for herself and all breastfeeding mothers.
"If a new mum is hearing that, or is being told to cover up or to leave, they may stop breastfeeding, they may be embarrassed and it's sad. It needs to be more supported,” said Aidan Johnson.
Meanwhile, the gym’s Facebook page have been an influx of one-star reviews after Aidan’s story became viral. The couple have been members for only two months, but Aidan plans to leave.
She said she doesn’t want to give a business like that her money.
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