Sit-in held at Oak Creek High School after mom berated for breastfeeding daughter

 

A group of women held a breastfeeding sit-in at the Oak Creek High School Aquatic Center on Friday - just one day after a mom says staff confronted her and told her she couldn't nurse her child there.

Sarah Steuck, mother of one-year-old Clara Steuck, said the incident happened during a parent-child swim class Thursday morning that is geared for kids six months to two-years-old.

Steuck says Clara was acting-up during the class so she followed some parenting advice and took her daughter to the corner of the pool so she could nurse for a moment.

She says that is the moment when staff approached to tell her to go into the locker room if she was going to breastfeed her child.

"...telling me that it's unsanitary for the pool, that it was not okay that I was doing it in there. And I was upset so I asked him to please stop and just leave me and give me a moment," Steuck said.

"And he got down farther and he told me 'No, I need you to hear this'. He was pretty aggressive in the way that he was talking to me and I just felt like I was pinned in a corner," Steuck said.

Other people in the class noticed it happening.

"I was so shocked, I couldn't focus on what I was doing because I've never seen this happen or take place before. Everybody's just been so supportive of nursing," Tammy Seibert, another mom in the water at the time, said.

"We kind of organized a breastfeeding sit-in. So I had some moms show up and support me by breastfeeding there," Steuck said.

A photographer from the blog Azure Mahara was in the aquatic center when the sit-in happened to capture the show of support. Five women and their children participated in the moment.

"We want to support her because if that were me in that situation I wouldn't be very happy. I would be livid I think," Seibert said.

"We let them know that this is against the state law. You can't tell somebody that they can't nurse their child," Seibert said.

"As soon as I walked in, the same guy who walked up to me in class came over and apologized all over himself. I think he finally understood the severity of the situation," Steuck said.

"She needed me. And I don't think that breastfeeding is a bad thing. And I stand by that," Steuck said.

The Oak Creek-Franklin Joint School District declined to comment on the allegations until after they had completed their own investigation.