Portsmouth Museum Apologises To Breastfeeding Mum

13 March 2014, 13:41

A Portsmouth museum's said sorry to a mum who was ordered to stop breastfeeding by a member of staff.

Heather Vaughan from Whiteley says she was left upset and humiliated at the National Museum of the Royal Navy.

She'd gone to the creche to feed her 9-week-old daughter on Saturday (8 March).

Heather told Heart:

"He quite angrily pointed to me and said 'we don't do that here, there are baby toilets you can go and do that in'.

"He came up to me in front of another family and spoke to me so rudely, I was just ashamed really.

"I was just so mortified and embarrassed, I felt victimised. My emotions just got the better of me, I just broke down. It took me all day to calm down from that incident.

"She's early nine weeks old and this was our first full-day outing. But I was worried that at my daughter's next feed I didn't want to be out in public, so we cut our day short and came home early."

Dominic Tweddle, Director General, The National Museum of the Royal Navy, said:
 
"We are very sorry to Mrs Vaughan for this mistake and error in judgment from one of our team.

"Our member of staff became confused and is deeply and sincerely sorry for his comments and reactions. This incident is not representative of him or our organisations and we all regret the distress caused.
 
"The National Museum of the Royal Navy and Portsmouth Historic Dockyard take this issue very seriously and are committed to putting in place improved procedures and staff training to ensure an incident such as this will never happen in the future. Each year we successfully welcome thousands of visitors to our museums and we try very hard to give every single customer a great experience and on this occasion we got it wrong."