Alison Martin is deputy news editor at the Leicester Mercury and a mother of one. Here she talks about her views on breastfeeding:
I didn't really want to breastfeed my baby while in the grounds of a historic Welsh castle that was heaving with tourists. But my four-month-old had been screaming for 15 minutes and it was that ear-piercing cry which meant: "Give me food NOW, Mum!"
So I found a comfortable bench and fed him. Nobody batted an eyelid. Nobody cared. And my insecurity about breastfeeding my little boy in a busy public place, which was quite crippling and difficult in the first few months of being a mum, suddenly evaporated.
I'm telling you this as it has been a week since Nigel Farage's comments backing staff at Claridge's in London who asked a breastfeeding mum to cover up. He said that mothers should "perhaps sit in the corner" when they breastfeed. Then he backtracked and things got a lot vaguer. But his comments made me realise that a lot of people don't think it's okay for mums to breastfeed in public.
I've been getting angry about this all week.
As all breastfeeding mums understand, when your baby is hungry in those chaotic first few months, you can't just hang on until you arrive at a convenient private place. That baby needs his milk there and then, or else everyone in the surrounding mile radius will be deafened by his cries.
They also know that it's not always possible to feed that baby discreetly. As soon as a baby becomes aware of what's going on around him, he wants to turn his head and look at it. That's really not very helpful if you are trying to be discreet. Yes, you can splash out on over-priced nursing clothes and breastfeeding aprons. Or you can just improvise and hope for the best.
The thing is: it's really tough being a new mum – whether you are breastfeeding or bottle-feeding your baby. Well-meaning people, from medical professionals to your own family, are constantly giving you advice and telling you how to do things.
There is a lot of pressure to breastfeed even though the world is full of healthy people who were bottle-fed as youngsters. And in the first few months of being a parent you are at the bottom of a very, very steep learning curve.
So I have a message to Nigel Farage, the staff at Claridge's and everyone else who has commented on this issue. New mums have got far higher priorities – mainly making sure their little one is fed, happy and healthy – than trying not to offend someone who could easily just look away if they didn't like what they saw.
