A list of businesses around Wanganui where mothers are provided with a comfortable breastfeeding environment follows a similar list used by Taranaki District Health Board (TDHB).
Businesses must earn a tick on nine boxes to earn "Breastfeeding Welcome Here" status from the Whanganui District Health Board (WDHB).
They must have supportive, welcoming staff, comfortable seating, a safe and secure environment, a good temperature, pushchair access, some level of privacy, and a baby change and handwash area. The business must also be clean and smokefree.
Mother of three Sarsh Eberlein said she'd seen places around Wanganui with a sign saying breastfeeding was welcome, and thought it was a good idea.
"It makes you feel a lot better," Miss Eberlein said, who is currently breastfeeding her 9-month-old daughter, Leonie.
"Personally I would be far more relaxed in a place that I know expects it."
Miss Eberlein said she'd received "shocking" feedback from members of the public when feeding her child, including once when she was in the food court at Trafalgar Square with her baby and two older children.
"When I've got my elder two it's not appropriate for me to just huddle up in a mother's room.
"I got lunch and the little one started getting fussy and that. I sat there and fed her. I got told why can't I go and feed her in the loo? I just said, 'How about you go and eat your lunch in the loo!'
"It's not like mothers just flop their boob out, we do try to do it as discreetly as we can."
Miss Eberlein said she often received "filthy looks" from teenagers in particular.
She described having to feed Leonie in Palmerston North's Plaza as "nerve-racking".
WDHB began working on the list about 2010/11 after Taranaki begun theirs, nutrition and physical activity health promoter Awhi Turvey said.
"Anne Kauika who was Heha [Healthy Eating - Healthy Action] project manager at that time for WDHB had good relationships with TDHB and had been told about the great stories of encouraging and promoting breastfeeding within the community through this accreditation," Ms Turvey said.
"As a part of Heha we decided to also use the same accreditation process here in Wanganui."