A mother who was left “shaken” by an incident at her local café has spoken out and defended breastfeeding in front of other people.

22-year-old Molly Musto was visiting Gallagher’s Of Barnsley in Barnsley, England, with her fiancé Thomas Veale and her 7-week-old baby boy Bobby when the family was suddenly approached by one of the café’s owners.

According to the mom-of-one, she was approached as soon as she entered the place only to be told to be more “discreet” when breastfeeding her baby or leave.

“We opened the door. Firstly, the woman asked. ‘How are you?’ and then she said ‘I need to have a word with you.’ We hadn’t even sat down, she came to the door. It was one of the two owners,” Molly recalled.

“I expected it to be something like, ‘Oh there’s a bit of a food shortage.’ I didn’t expect it was going to be personal. She said: ‘You’re welcome to breastfeed but you need to be more discreet about it like the other women who come here. If you can adhere to that then stay.’

“I was like, ‘No I’m not adhering to that.’ I’m going to assume it’s something like cover her head, but I don’t know.”

The young mom went on to say she was left shaken because of the owner’s confrontational approach and unreasonable demands in the so-called family-friendly establishment.

“As she was saying that I was angry to be honest to begin with because she’s seven-weeks-old. If she needs feeding, she needs feeding. But I also felt uncomfortable,” Molly continued.

“We came somewhere that we knew we wanted to sit and have food and the next minute, we felt like we had to leave. We weren’t welcome.”

Molly later left a negative review of the café on Facebook where she doubled down saying she was “aggressively confronted” by the owner while claiming she was forced to find a better place where she could breastfeed her daughter “without judgment.”

Molly also revealed that she previously breastfed her baby at the same café without an issue and that this was the first time she was told to be more discreet.

“My partner was also really shaken up – someone confronted us both about something we don’t feel like we did wrong,” the mother added.

“I’ve always been so confident and just got on with it, it has knocked it [my confidence] a bit. I won’t be going back there again. I’ve filed an official complaint and they’ve said they’ll come back to me in seven days, [but] whether anything will come out of that, I don’t know.”

After the story went viral, a representative for Gallagher’s of Barnsley spoke out to defend the café saying they were just forced to pass on a comment made by another customer.

“We regularly have quite a few ladies breastfeeding, so this is nothing new to us. The second time she came in, a member of staff served her and she was quite off with the member of staff. They brought a lot of shopping in with them. They had to leave it all around the table,” their statement read.

“They had no disturbance (during) the breastfeeding, and then left. However, on leaving, the staff member approached her and said, ‘What about your rubbish?’ and she said, ‘Well that’s for you to deal with,’ and walked off quite angrily.

“The member of staff approached her (next time she came in) and said, ‘There’s a couple of things I need to chat to you about before you move forward.’ She spoke to her about the rubbish and her behavior towards staff, and said, ‘Just to point out that when you were here last time, two members of the public had approached us and said that they felt it wasn’t really discreet (how) you’re breastfeeding.’”

The café continued: “The staff member went to get some menus and get them sat down, and the woman said, ‘I’m not breastfeeding discreetly,’ turned around and stormed out of the place.

“It’s not us. It’s passing on the comment of a customer. When she was in at the time when she made people feel uncomfortable, she says she wasn’t spoken to then. (That’s because) the law says she can’t be spoken to then.”

Concluding their post, the café hit back at the “hate campaign” that their business has been facing since the mother’s post went viral while reassuring all customers that breastfeeding women were welcome in their institution.

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