Mother 'banned' from gallery for breast-feeding

A mother today told how she was "ordered" to stop breast-feeding her daughter in the National Gallery.

Catherine Gulati claimed she was told it was forbidden to feed 11-month-old Nina in one of the gallery's viewing rooms.

Catherine Gulati claimed she was told it was forbidden to feed 11-month-old Nina in one of the gallery's viewing rooms. Today a row erupted over the order, with breastfeeding campaigners claiming it was an own goal by a gallery which features at least 49 paintings of topless women.

One of the gallery's most famous exhibits is Tintoretto's The Origin of The Milky Way - which shows Juno breast-feeding Hercules.

Mrs Gulati, 33, from Solihull, was told by a young woman attendant she had to go to a

mother-and-baby room to continue breastfeeding, though other visitors did not complain.

Today she told of her anger and said: "The National Gallery is full of pictures of with women with bare breasts and with babies.

"I thought it ironic because in another room there was a picture of a bare breast with milk squirting out of it called the Milky Way." MPs are now planning to raise the issue with the gallery, one of London's most important attractions.

Today it apologised to Mrs Gulati. The gallery said it was official policy to let women breastfeed throughout the building.

"Our warder was offering assistance in suggesting Mrs Gulati and

her child might have been more comfortable in one of our motherand-baby rooms," it said.

Today Julia Drown MP - a breastfeeding mother as well as chair of the all-party maternity group - described the attendant's order to Mrs Gulati as " ridiculous". She is to write to the gallery for reassurances it will not happen again.

The National Childbirth Trust, of which Mrs Gulati is a member and which campaigns to encourage mothers to breastfeed, called on the gallery to push through policy changes it promised after a similar incident last year.

The Government is also attempting to encourage breastfeeding, which is now less common in Britain than most of the developed world.

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