Support for mum in breast pump bar row
THE mum behind a viral Facebook post about being thrown out of a bar for using a breast pump has blasted the drinking establishment’s management.
The post’s author, Natalee Cooper, was out with five other friends when the incident took place at The Emporium Bar on Elm Grove in Southsea.
The post, which has been sharedmorethan2,000times, claims that a male ‘manager’ burst into the bar’s toilets, where four of them were chatting while the new mum, Natalie Reade, was in a cubicle expressing milk with a breast pump.
He then ‘insinuated’ that they were doing drugs – which Natalee strongly denies.
Describing the incident at about 6.30pm on Saturday, Natalee, from Waterlooville said: ‘They say men and women might come into clean the toilet, but there was no warning or “girls, I’m coming in...” He literally just barged in.
‘We were just in there having a laugh, taking pictures and things.
‘But it was his attitude and the way he was shouting at us.’
To prove it was just milk, two of the friends, plus another woman also there jokingly drank a tiny amount of the breast milk, which Natalee says the man bizarrely compared to spiking a drink with a date-rape drug and branded them ‘disgusting’.
When the women were back at their table, the manager saw a small amount of liquid spill from the now cleaned pump as Natalie tried to put it back in her handbag.
He came over and accused them of ‘squirting’ milk. He then snatched and broke the pump before ordering the group to leave.
But Natalee added: ‘We weren’t being confrontational, we weren’t fighting or smashed drunk.
‘We’d been in [Osborne Road bar] Rapscallions earlier and Natalie had been expressing at the table, and there was no problem. The staff there were lovely.
‘If she doesn't express regularly it can be very painful – and it can be dangerous.’
The News has been unable to speak to anyone from Emporium despite repeated calls and messages. A post at the top of their Facebook page says: ‘We do not and have not ever had an issue with expressing or breast feeding. We hold events here like children's parties and also baby showers and these things are expected so it would be no different on a Saturday evening.’