Mom gets $115 ticket while breastfeeding baby in parked car

NEW YORK (CNN) – A New York mother is asking for some compassion after receiving a $115 parking ticket while breastfeeding her hungry newborn.

Guillermina Rodriguez, 30, said she had no choice but to pull into a commercial parking zone to feed her baby after getting stuck in traffic.

Rodriguez said things got hairy when she driving through about 45 minutes of traffic in Midtown Manhattan with her 3-month-old daughter in tow. 

“I’m like almost crying because she’s crying and all I want to do is pull over so I can attend to her,” Rodriguez said.

The mother pulled over in a metered commercial zone along 8th Avenue near west 30th and 31st streets and got into the backseat of her van and started breastfeeding. But not even two minutes later she said 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 her horn.

Fortunately, he didn’t tow her, but she said he did squint through her tinted windows.

“I show him the baby and obviously my breast. I’m like, ‘I’m breastfeeding the baby,’ and he looks and he goes like that and he goes like this and then he just puts the ticket and he walks away,” she said.

Someday this might make an entertaining story for Ileana.

Right now, Rodriguez is just planning to fight the ticket and calling breastfeeding advocates to raise public 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,” said Laura Beth Gilman, of La Leche League of NY.