As I said – it didn’t bother me and I’m trying to work out what bothered them! It wouldn’t have bothered me if it was a babe or toddler or child, and it didn’t bother me that it was a pump. She was well-prepared for it, didn’t make a big deal out of it when doing it, and only spilt a bit of milk (sadly!) when closing the containers.

I’m unsure of how to discuss this with the people in my class who are midwives. I kid you not.

A break at least half an hour long halfway through the class may have been a better way to accommodate her needs, if she preferred to express in private; though if she wasn’t a particularly quick expresser, she may have also needed someone to bring her food and drink while she spent that time expressing.

If you’re asking me what I personally think? If she was expressing with a pump quiet enough not to unreasonably disrupt the class, I would have zero problem with it. You may not realise, Emma Someone, that I have pumped milk in public many a time – on aeroplanes, in parties, in family reunions, and in restaurants. Sit-down times were perfect times to express, and when you have to express for at least 160 minutes a day, it’s going to overlap with something else that needs doing. No-one ever had a visible issue with me expressing, and many people were helpful and kind. It was lovely to feed my child in such a supportive environment, and there is no reason that environment can’t exist everywhere.

Perhaps it could have been an opportunity for those people – and Psychology students at that! – to reflect on their own feelings, and examine exactly why they were “freaked out”, and look at how their emotions were the product of a deeply abnormal and fucked-up upbringing in a society with a nonsensical taboo.

Emma, it does sound as if in that situation there had been plenty of accommodations made for her to pump in privacy at appropriate intervals, so it does make one wonder why she did not. But she shouldn’t be required to sequester herself in order to pump either.

Perhaps she was trying to make a point? She’s perfectly entitled to do so, of course.

Miss Manners would say that it is wrong to make other people uncomfortable when a small effort on your part would remove that discomfort from their experience. But Miss Manners rules often require women to collaborate in making their own efforts invisible and therefore easily dismissed, so I’m half “she could have been more polite” and half “bollocks to that”.

I wonder whether what the other students feel is “inappropriate” is not so much her expressing per se but that she felt no need to make her effort invisible for the benefit of others.

It’s a genuine question and I’m asking because I am in the situation where I myself wasn’t bothered by the act but others were and was I notbothered because I’m openminded, woman-focused, aware of the discomfort issue and fully supportive of a woman’s right to breastfeed, or am I at the extreme of “whatever floats your boat – it takes more courage to do it than for me to be ok with it” spectrum and other people aren’t? I’ve had a lot of students tell me that it was “inapporpriate” but they can’t articulate why… hence the question.

Should that woman have to miss out on class in order to pump? Or sit there in aching discomfort until the class is over when she could be relieving that pain by using the pump? Just so that others in the class don’t get freaked out by breastmilk getting pumped?