Breastfeeding Moms Kicked Out Of ‘Bad Moms’

A Regal Cinema in Fort Myers, Florida kicked two breastfeeding moms out of a screening of Bad Moms

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve seen the trailer for Bad Moms, and if you’re super lucky, then you’ve even seen it already.

New moms Brookynn Cahill and Juliana Valverde were part of a Facebook group of friends planning to go to dinner and see the film together. There were 50 women in the group in total, 46 who purchased their tickets in advance of the movie. All week long the group chatted online about how excited they were to see the movie and how much they wanted to braid Kristen Bell’s hair (I’m imagining that part, but probably, right? It just looks so smooth and silky). The night was going to be amazing — or so they thought.

Cahill and Valverde breastfeed, so naturally, they brought their infants with them to the theater. But when they arrived to pick up their pre-ordered tickets, they were told the babies couldn’t go into the movie. “No one had communicated that children under 6 were not allowed in R-rated movies,” Amber Cebull, one of the group members told News-Press.com “We had breast-feeding moms with infants, one 4 weeks and one 7 months, and they refused them entry.” The breastfeeding moms were told to see Ice Age: Collision Course instead, which is awful, not just because that movie had started an hour ago, but because, Ice Age, seriously?

Yes, Bad Moms is rated R. But taking a baby to an R-rated movie doesn’t make you a bad mom. In fact, Regal Cinema allows kids into R-rated movies all the time. Children between the ages of six and 17 can attend an R-rated movie at any time as long as they are with a parent or guardian. Infants and babies are welcome at R-rated movies too — as long as the movie starts before 6 p.m. This particular showing of Bad Moms ? 7:45 pm. It wasn’t the content of the film that was the issue, only the time the movie was showing.

Cahill says she wishes the theater would use common sense in the case of young infants. “I think that they have a right to have their rules for their theater,” she said. “But I think it needs to be a little different with the age limit. Young babies are sleeping and being perfectly fine. If our babies are going to make a noise, we know how to handle this situation.”

She and Valverde went into Ice Age, and then slipped into Bad Moms while their babies were asleep, but the theater manager busted them and told them to leave. “All day I had anxiety and was so nervous how she was going to be,” said Cahill. “I was coming up with ways to say I couldn’t make it, but I need to get out. I have to do this and trust that she is going to be an awesome baby.”

Imagine psyching yourself up all day to take your baby on a big night out, and then being humiliated like this in front of your friends and a bunch of strangers. “They made me feel like a terrible person for bringing my child,” Cahill said.

Members of the group tried to reason with the theater manager but they claim he was unwilling to listen to them, even when they said the moms were willing to sit on the aisle and leave if the babies made any noise. They also claim the manager insisted Valverde cover up while breastfeeding when she was talking to him and that he refused to let them talk to his superior (By the way public breastfeeding is legal Florida, and breastfeeding without a cover is not considered an act of public indecency).

This manager needs to get a grip. It’s a movie, not national security.

Valverde started to cry, and that’s when the group decided they’d had enough. Once the manager agreed to refund them the cost of the tickets, the majority of the group decided to leave the movie and moved the party to a Mexican restaurant instead.

Screw that dude. Cheers to these bad moms, and great friends.