Photo: Courtesy Sadie Durbin
A Kentucky mom is suing Texas Roadhouse after a restaurant manager allegedlytried to cover her with a napkinwhile she breastfed her newborn daughter.
Sadie Durbin was dining with her family at a Louisville location of the steakhouse chain on Nov. 15 when her then 7-week-old daughter started to get fussy.
“She got hungry, so she needed to nurse,” the mom of two, 30, tells PEOPLE. “I latched her on like I always do, and she was nursing for maybe five minutes when I saw the manager coming around the corner, walking fast and shaking his head at me with a napkin in his hands.”
Sadie Durbin and her daughter.Jennifer Rittenberry
Breastfeeding in public is legal across the United States, and has been legal in Kentucky, with or without a cover, since 2006.
PEOPLE has contacted Texas Roadhouse for comment.
Durbin adds that she was covered up as much as she possibly could be, but that it was difficult to nurse.
“There were two giant peanut buckets in front of me, she was wrapped up in a blanket and I had her in a cross-cradle position, as discrete as I can be,” Durbin says. “I find it really difficult, pretty much impossible, to cover. I have to hold my breast, I have to hold the [nipple] shield, and I have to hold her head perfectly in order to nurse her. She unlatches as soon as I try to put a cover over her.”
The stay-at-home mom says she saw the manager talking to another female patron who was glaring at Durbin, so she asked her waitress to see who had complained. That prompted the manager to return and tell her again to cover up, which led Durbin and her husband to leave the restaurant.
Sadie Durbin and her family.Jennifer Rittenberry
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“I think it’s my only recourse,” she says. “There’s a law, but there’s no penalty attached to the law.”
“I think that if I can avoid one mom feeling like I felt in that situation, then yes, I am happy I spoke out,” she says.
source: people.com
