My nursing experience in Houston, Texas

I was told by Davis and Associates in Houston, Texas that this was a place of business, and if I wanted to nurse my baby, I should go sit in my car and do it.

I had been waiting for my taxi for about 20 minutes and decided to ask the secretary if I could sit down and nurse Annie for a minute. There was no place to sit in the large building complex. She said it was ok. A few minutes later, a man came out, asked me what I was doing and left the office. He came back a minute later. A few minutes later, the secretary was paged back. Shortly after a young woman came out, I’m assuming a paralegal, probably sent by the man, to ask me to leave.

I thought about why I was sitting in this lawyer’ s office in Houston, TX, hundreds of miles away from not only my car, but my home. I thought about telling them that my husband, daughter and son were detained in Costa Rica. My husband was not allowed to leave the country with our daughter because she has dual Costa Rican-US citizenship. Costa Rica requires you to sign in person a special minor release form. I had not gone to Costa Rica with my husband because we thought Annie was too young to travel. My children were wanting to come home. I had to fly with my 5 month old baby to Houston, to sign in person the paperwork so my husband would be able to come home with my two small children and return to work, canceling two days of patients and most likely, swamping his co-workers with an extra workload.

I thought about telling them that on the way to this very office complex, we had just saw a horrible car accident, a car over turned on the interstate. The ambulances were there, loading a man under a stretcher. The taxi driver, Jose, who I was riding with, saw another man crushed underneath the car, dying just minutes before we speedily drove by in the carpool lane. Fortunately, I did not see this dead body, however, Jose was deeply effected and silent for the rest of the ride.


I didn't say anything about why I was there, sitting in Davis's office. I got up and said good-bye. Why transmit all my negative feelings of what had happened to me to these people, who sadly enough, were not compassionate people at this moment.

As I drove away, in the taxi had took an extra half-and-hour longer returning for me because Jose had decided to go on a shopping spree at Ross, I thought about the people in that lawyers office. Here I was in Texas, part of the Bible Belt of America, and I couldn’t help but think, those office people probably went to church on Sunday and prided themselves on being good Christians. Again, I thought, here I was, halfway through a very stressful journey, and these people had thrown me out of their place of business because they didn’t want to potentially offend any clients that would come in. Which, may I say, no one came into their office while I was there, much less the large building complex.

Really, what we had here, from my perspective, was a huge cultural gap. The man, who was offended by my nursing, probably was not around other woman who had chosen to nurse. Maybe his wife or sisters had bottle fed their children. He hadn't experienced what it was like for a woman to have to nurse away from home and out on the street (so to speak.) He saw it as something inappropriate. Yet, what if I had been a male, wanting to check my email for a minute and borrow his waiting room chair, would he have reacted in the same way?

Fortunately, Annie is a quick nurse, it was just 5 minutes that I needed, and she was done. I got up, told them thank you, and step in the large lobby of the building. My taxi pulled up. I strapped Annie into the car seat, dropped a few pieces of important paperwork, got it back together, lifted Annie up, and stepped into the taxi.

Happy that I wasn’t afraid to ask what I needed for Annie and myself, happy it never occurred to me that I would be offending someone nursing my baby and most happy that Annie had a full belly and rode happily to the airport, falling asleep on the way. On the way to the airport, a dear friend called me to tell me she was pregnant, and I was so happy to be reconnect with my female mama friends and leave that business office world behind.