Airport needs to move with times

BREASTFEEDING is no longer a hidden activity.

Women are encouraged to do it all over the place — cafes, parks and restaurants. There are special shawls and tops for nursing babies, and forums dedicated to breast power.

But not everywhere is as enlightened.

Last week, I inquired about where I could breastfeed at London’s City Airport and was met by confused staff faces.

Eventually a lovely female security guard led me to the room normally reserved for stripping and searching passengers so I could express milk in privacy.

(As a wee footnote here to any men whose eyes have glazed over — expressing milk just means using a machine to do what a baby would by mimicking sucking. If you build up too much milk you get ill, often with mastitis, which trust me is just awful).

Anyway, when we got to the room, she sheepishly asked a very logical question: “If you don’t mind me asking, where’s your baby?”

I explained I was travelling alone but had a baby at home and had to express milk with an electric pump — or else get pretty ill.

Not only does using such a machine involve exposing your breasts but it is accompanied by a mechanical noise like a mooing cow.

Not what hundreds of men in suits want to see and hear as they wait at the airport — and certainly not what I want them to see or hear.

Nobody talks about pumping rights, do they? But surely there are droves of breastfeeding women travelling solo in need of privacy.

Is a strip and search room the best we can offer new mums at an international airport? It seems times haven’t moved on as much as we may often assume they have.