How a four-month-old baby made history at the Northern Ireland Assembly

By Tori Watson

History was made at Stormont for many reasons today - MLAs failed in their fourth bid to nominate a speaker and resume business as usual at the Assembly - but elsewhere in the chamber, a tiny baby set her own mark on the chamber.

While politicians verbally tussled over the motion before them, Alliance MLA Kate Nicholl breastfed her four-month-old daughter, Étaín.

"She's the first baby to be breastfed in the chamber," explained the South Belfast representative.

"It wasn't orchestrated - she needed to be fed, so I fed her and then she came back up to the positive vibes of my office away from the chamber," she added.

"I'm glad that we were able to showcase that you can be a mother with small children in politics and actually we need more women to be involved."

The former Belfast Lord Mayor added that she was worried women were put off getting involved in politics and that "it's going to get even worse when you see this deadlock and everything that's happening".

"There's just so little faith in the institutions and so many women don't see a place for themselves in politics and we really need to adjust that narrative," she said.

Ms Nicholl added: "To give credit to my colleagues from across the political spectrum, they've been really supportive and the recognise it's a problem as all parties have young women.

"They recognise that change needs to happen, it's just a pity the assembly won't be running and able to do the changes that we need."

In years to come, Ms Nicholl, who was born in Zimbabwe, said she'll tell her daughter she was "a trailblazer".

"I'll tell her she was a trailblazer baby, and that I'm really sorry we didn't have traditional maternity leave, I would've loved to have had that with her but hopefully we will, together, have made it possible for other mothers to have that with their babies and that's really important," she said. "She's already been better behaved than some of the MLAs in the chamber," she added.

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