NEW YORK – A New York mother is asking for some compassion after getting a parking ticket while breast-feeding her hungry newborn.
After getting stuck in traffic, the mother says she had no choice but to pull into a commercial zone to feed her baby.
Ileana is 3 months old and her mother says at around 11:30 Monday morning, while driving through about 45 minutes of traffic, things got hairy.
"I'm like almost crying because she's crying and all I want to do is pull over so I can attend to her," Guillermina Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez pulled over in a metered commercial zone, got into the backseat of her van and started breast-feeding. She said less than two minutes later, a police tow truck pulled up.
"He just literally took out the tow truck,” Rodriguez said. “He was going to tow the car without even looking in there."
With Ileana still latched on, Rodriguez sprang up front to honk.
Fortunately he didn't tow her, but she says he did squint through her tinted windows.
"I show him the baby and obviously my breasts,” she said. “I'm like, I'm breastfeeding the baby and he looks. And then he just puts the ticket and he walks away."
The ticket was for $115.
Rodriguez is planning to fight the ticket and calling breastfeeding advocates to raise awareness.
"As a society we need to hear babies crying and answer them and that -- you know, I don't think she deserves a ticket for that," Laura Beth Gilman, of La Leche League of NY, said.
The New York Police Department has not commented on the ticket.