An Australian mother has revealed how she was verbally abused by a man for breastfeeding her baby in a cafe.
With her daughter and four-month-old baby in tow, Ashley Rogers, 30, carefully picked a spot at a local Melbourne cafe so she could breastfeed discreetly.
Just moments later, a man seated nearby stood up and started yelling. In a Facebook post shared on Saturday, Rogers said she initially didn't realise the man's abuse was directed at her.
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"I turned around to see what they were yelling at," she wrote.
"It wasn't until I turned my back I realised he was yelling at me. I then heard him say, 'You're disgusting, that's disgusting, cover your t**s'."
Rogers wrote that a woman who appeared to be the man's elderly mother sat quietly and didn't stop his tirade.
Rogers retaliated by telling the man, "I'm feeding my goddamn son".
She claims the incident was particularly upsetting as her baby has been struggling to gain weight and was hospitalised for failure to thrive.
"I must feed him on demand," she wrote.
"What people also don't know is how hard I have worked to breastfeed."
Before the birth of her four-month-old, Rogers had been too embarrassed to breastfeed her other children in public.
"Now I feed anywhere, any bloody time he wants," she said in the post.
After the man's abusive rant, Rogers was comforted by a number of bystanders. She said a woman came over to hug her and "one lovely gentleman" offered his support.
"Go eat your lunch in a smelly bathroom with a blanket over your head," was Rogers' message to the man.
"Tell me how you like it."
Newshub.
