17/03/2021
Love this!!
Normalizing breastfeeding toddlers 🤱 https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=609754206193892&id=400361153799866
I remember the first time I saw a toddler breastfeeding.
I found it weird. Really weird.
It seemed unnatural to me that a child who could walk and talk should STILL need to nurse.
The second time I saw it, it seemed less weird.
And the third, fourth and fifth time I was fine with it.
“Each to their own, but it’s not for me”, I would say.
I swore that I would breastfeed my own child till six months. Maximum.
Anything after that and they should be using bottles. Of expressed milk or formula. Particularly out in public. After all, they get all they need from solid food from six months anyway.
Six months came. And went.
He refused bottles.
I could barely pump a drop.
Breastfeeding in public was not the discreet affair that I had envisaged.....
And he refused milk in any other form other than straight from the tap...
I was stressed and confused and I inadvertently found myself breastfeeding into toddlerhood.
Every assumption that I had ever made;
About him not needing it past six months, and about how he should be taking bottles...
he dispelled my ignorance at every corner.
And he showed me that he DID need it.
I just had to find that out for myself.
And breastfeeding a toddler suddenly didn’t feel weird. It made so much sense.
For us.
When he was unwell he would rely on it.
When he was upset he would rely on it.
And when he was hurting, happy, tired, angry, hungry, thirsty, sad; he would rely on it.
Until one day he was able to check in with his own emotions, and he no longer relied on it.
He developed his own coping mechanisms.
So why is it important to normalise natural term breastfeeding?
Because if this is the first time someone sees it, then the second or third time it will be slightly less weird. And by the fifth time, it would hardly be noticed or commented upon at all.
Because the only thing that is unnatural about natural term breastfeeding, is society’s ASSUMPTION that it is unnatural or weird.
It was my unrealistic expectations that made it unnatural. And it was my lack of understanding that made it weird.
It is one of motherhoods greatest contradictions;
to push the importance of breastfeeding without adequate support, and then push for her and her child to stop before either of them are ready.
And that needs to end.
