Mum Shamed By Flight Attendant When She Couldn’t Put Her Baby’s Seat Belt On While Breastfeeding

A mum was furious and was reduced to tears after one flight attendant shamed her when she wasn’t able to put her baby’s seat belt on as she was breastfeeding her.

First-time mum Josephine admitted she was nervous flying for the first time with her 11-week-old daughter, Leia, from the Gold Coast to Melbourne on Tuesday.

Thankfully, things went smooth during take off, but suddenly turned sour when it was time for the plane to descend.

“My baby was fabulous the entire flight and barely made a noise. On the descent I put her infant seat belt on, however due to the change in air pressure she became unsettled so I began to breastfeed her,” Josephine explains.

She added that when the infant seat belt got loose, she tried to put it back on, but it was difficult putting it back with one hand. That’s when she heard the female flight attendant shaming her by passing a comment to someone else.

“As she was lying down the seatbelt fell down her legs and I tried to put it back on but with one hand and no one to help it was quite difficult. At this point I heard a flight attendant who was sitting at the back of the plane say ‘That baby doesn’t have a seat belt on’. Once again I tried to fix it but couldn’t so I just held her and kept feeding.

“Once we landed the same flight attendant passed a comment to someone else saying ‘That baby hasn’t had a seat belt on the entire time, how irresponsible is that?'”

Despite hearing it and starting to get upset, Josephine decided to ignore the comment. When the plane landed, she waited for every passenger to leave before she got up to get organised. She said that two of the flight attendants helped her, which she said was ‘lovely’.

But when she met them at the gate, she fumed with their seemingly innocent remark. “She jokingly laughed and said ‘Gosh I hope you weren’t the irresponsible mother that didn’t put her baby’s seat belt on, that flight attendant has been going on about a mother on the plane’,” Josephine said.

Then, she said that the same flight attendant was now talking to a male attendant at the gate. “Not only has the flight attendant called me irresponsible to whomever she was talking to in the first place, but she had then continued spreading her opinion of me and my skills as a mother to other people. Not once did this lady offer to help me, or give me any support,” she said.

At that point, Josephine was already furious that she decided to confront the flight attendant. “I told her the situation and she replied with ‘Well you should know how important it is’. I asked her why she didn’t offer to come and help me when she could see I needed help and she said she wasn’t allowed to get up off her seat,” she said.

She said that as a new mother who is flying solo, this was the last thing she needed.

“Flying with kids is hard, being a new mum is hard and the last thing we need when we’re trying to do the right thing for our baby is to overhear people passing comments and not offering support,” she said.

Josephine took to Facebook this disheartening incident.

Kidspot contacted Jetstar for comment but had not heard back at the time of publishing, but the airline, responded to Josephine’s Facebook post, apologising for the incident. “I’m so sorry to hear about this. We train our staff to be considerate of everyone’s needs and require them to provide professional, polite and friendly service at all times, so I’m sorry if this wasn’t your experience. Would you be able to send us your booking reference number? We’ll look further into this for you. Hope to hear from you soon? Thanks.”

Source: Kidspot.com.au