LITTLETON, Colo. — A dispute over breastfeeding led to a backlash against one of Littleton's newest businesses.
The controversy was brief and started after Nicole Sherrill visited Urban Air Trampoline and Adventure Park with her kids last week. Sherrill said she needed to pump milk for her three-month-old son, but when she asked an employee for a private room to do so, she was only given two options.
One choice was to pump in the restroom.
"I informed him there wasn't anywhere but the toilet to nurse on and I was kind of blown off a little bit," Sherrill said.
The other option was to leave the building to nurse, but Sherrill said she was told if she did, she would have to pay a second time for re-entry.
Sherrill said when she finally spoke with a manager about her situation, he replied asking, "Pump what?"
Sherill said she posted her complaint about Urban Air in a few different online support groups for breastfeeding mothers she belongs to reaching "about 7,000 people" in all of them combined.
Upset about what had happened, several of the mothers did some complaining of their own by writing bad Google reviews about the business.
"Look, we are here," Sherrill said. "We need a place to sanitarily feed and cleanly feed our young, our children."
Brian Garcia, who owns the Urban Air franchise in Littleton and Albuquerque, said in a matter of half an hour, his business received "seven or eight negative reviews."
"We were like, 'Okay, this definitely needs to be addressed,'" Garcia said. "We definitely need to do something."
Garcia and his business partner are both fathers to young children.
"We both have wives that breastfed," he said. "It kind of hit home for us."
Shortly after reading the online reviews, Garcia booked a trip from New Mexico to Colorado to meet with Sherrill face to face.
"You know, it brought it to our attention and we're definitely going to act on it," Garcia said. "We want to take that feedback we get and use it to better ourselves."
Colorado has a law which says "a mother may breastfed in any place she has a right to be."
However, Garcia said he didn't need to wait for the law to be enforced. After his meeting with Sherrill, he said he and his partner are taking steps to transform a storage room into a place for nursing moms.
"What we want to do is we want to make sure we accommodate them as soon as possible."
He said the room, once finished, can also be used for parents who need a quiet place for their babies to sleep.
It didn't take long for Garcia to make the change. He said it only happened because a group of moms, who Sherrill said often goes unheard, made their concerns known to a person willing to listen.
"It means a lot to me and to the moms of the group," Sherrill told Garcia. "And we appreciate it."
Sherill said Garcia and Urban Air "has an entire community of breastfeeding mommas to support this company."
Business owners in Colorado can apply for grants to make their businesses friendlier to nursing moms. This includes the Advancing Breastfeeding in Colorado project which aims "to help women and families — especially those with less access to breastfeeding resources and lactation support at their jobs, in child care settings and medical offices, and in their communities," according to its website.
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