Mum called ‘disgusting’ for breastfeeding her baby in a cafe

A mother who needed to breastfeed her baby in a cafe has revealed how a man sitting nearby called her ‘disgusting’ when she did so in the public space. Ashley Rogers, 30, from Melbourne, said she had visited a coffee shop at her local mall in Frankston with her daughter and baby Archie, aged four-and-half months.Because she knew she need to breastfeed, the mum-of-three said she ‘carefully’ chose a spot that wasn’t too open or in ‘one’s face’.Moments later she said a man seated about 10 metres away stood up and started yelling – although at the time she wasn’t aware he was upset with her.’I turned around to see what the hell they were yelling at,’ Ashley told FEMAIL. ‘It wasn’t until I turned back, I realised, he was yelling at me. I then heard him say “You’re disgusting, that’s disgusting, cover your t*ts”.”This man did not come up quietly to say this, he yelled it out for the entire centre to hear.’All while his elderly mother sat by his side, doing and saying nothing.’Ashley said incident prompted her to defend herself and retaliate by telling the man ‘I’m feeding my goddamn son’. She said while the affair left her shocked, a few people also at the cafe came to her side. ‘By this stage some amazing women had come over and embraced me in a hug and I burst into tears,’ she said.’I was shaken, angry, embarrassed and on the same hand so honoured these women came to help me.’By the time I turned around, he was gone.’Ashley said although the man’s tirade was upsetting, what was worse was her son has been struggling to gain weight and at four months is no bigger than a newborn.’What a lot of people don’t know is my boy was hospitalised for failure to thrive, I must feed him on demand,’ she said. ‘What people also won’t know is how hard I have worked to breastfeed.”Medication, natural supplements, several pump sessions a day, hundreds, if not almost thousands spent on anything that would help me.’ The mum added before her son’s birth, she had been too embarrassed to breastfeed in public.’I then pushed through my fears and thoughts and now I feed everywhere, any bloody time he wants!,’ she said.Closing on a message to the man who publicly shamed her for taking care of her child, Ashley said: ‘Go eat your lunch in a smelly bathroom with a blanket over your head – tell me how you like it.’To those who supported her, including ‘one lovely gentleman’, Ashley said she couldn’t be more grateful. ‘Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. You are the reason I will continue to feed uncovered in public!’