The ultimate flash mob: Mums stage simultaneous breast-feeding protest after woman is kicked out of shopping centre



Dozens of mothers organised a ‘nurse-in’ protest, simultaneously breast-feeding at a shopping mall in Montreal this week in reaction to one of their number being earlier ejected from another Mall.

The Canadian mothers are up in arms after a woman was asked to leave a shopping centre where she was breast-feeding her child. With the help of social networking sites like Facebook and microblogging sites like Twitter, mass protest was organised.

About a hundred mothers attracted a curious crowd as they sought retribution for a clothes store that had thrown out 36-year-old Shannon Smith, a mother of three, for breast-feeding earlier this month.



Protest: Mothers participate in a demonstration in front of a clothing store in a shopping mall in Montreal, Canada. A mother had been thrown out of a shop earlier in the month for breast feeding her child

While on a shopping trip on January 5, Mrs Smith’s youngest child began to cry and she moved to a semi-secluded children’s corner and nursed the baby under a blanket.

However Mrs Smith was ordered to stop by an employee of the store, called Orchestra, leaving her surprised and upset.

She was so angry, the following day she created a blog, called breastfortheweary.com.

Around 60 mothers attended the 'nurse-in' in the shopping mall to express their right to breast feed in public

Breast for the Weary: Mrs Smith set up this blog to vent her ire, and it received a massive reaction

'I'm p*ssed,' she wrote. 'My older kids were sitting in their stroller watching the movie when my youngest got hungry.



‘So I fed her. She's five months old, and she eats breast milk. From my actual breast. Shocking, I know!'

One solitary post attracted almost 7,000 hits and a day later a Facebook group had been created for the nurse-in on January 19.

Media across Canada and in the U.S. soon caught wind of the story, and it sparked a national debate over whether Mrs Smith or the employee had been correct.

Some in favour of the employee said that breast-feeding is tantamount to eating lunch and even urinating – even going as far as to say that it should only happen in public bathrooms, or specially created rooms in malls.

However, mothers and parents retaliated, and argued that their young ones deserve to eat whenever, and that breast-feeding is convenient and healthy.

Rebecca Coughlin, 30, who came to the nurse-in with her six-month-old twin daughters, told AOL: 'I don't think there's any reason women should be relegated to a room.

‘It's something that we should be encouraging women to do. The last thing we should do is create a stigma around it.'

Another one of the nurse-in mob, 40-year-old Frances Moxant, said: 'I think that, basically, you should be able to do it any time and anywhere.



'Even my parish priest tells us to go ahead and do it in church. Jesus was breast-fed - he wasn't bottle-fed. So it's definitely all right.'

Mrs Smith was enthused by the large turnout and said she had been shocked by the frenzied reaction to her blog.

'A lot of people are pro-breast-feeding, and they don't talk about it because they just think it's normal,' she said.

Orchestra has since apologised to Smith, blaming the mistake on a poorly trained new employee.

