A stunned mother has told reporters how a bus driver demanded she 'Put them away or get off my bus'' when she fed her six-week-old son on board a Stagecoach service in Manchester.
Lauren McKenna, a 22-year-old nursing student, was travelling with her son D'Marion on the route from Ancoats to Beswick.
After being ordered off the bus, she was forced to walk a mile home, where she immediately lodged a complaint with Stagecoach's head office.
Miss McKenna was further outraged when a female employee allegedly told her: 'You shouldn't be doing it, should you'.
The fuming mum told reporters: 'I got on a 216 at Piccadilly Gardens and sat down in my normal seat at the front with my pram. I started to feed D'Marion and like normal I lifted up my jumper, pulled my tee shirt down and put a blanket over his head so nobody could see anything. I noticed the driver kept looking in his mirror at me and turning around and when we got to Ancoats he stopped and said: "Are you breastfeeding?" When I said yes he said: "You can't do that on here" He said you can either "put them away", which didn't make sense because he couldn't see anything, or 'get off the bus'.
'I'm not going to get on another Stagecoach bus until they apologise.'
Stagecoach issued a statement saying: 'We fully support mothers who wish to breastfeed their babies. There are clear health benefits from breastfeeding and we are more than happy for mothers to do so on our bus services. We are taking this matter extremely seriously and are carrying out a thorough investigation into this case, including a review of CCTV evidence from our buses. We are extremely sorry for the way this situation appears to have been handled.'
The saga continues here.
What do you think?
Should mothers have the right to breastfeed anywhere?
Have you ever been asked not to breastfeed in public?