So we were out last night with a group of friends.
It meant leaving my babe with the mother in law. This should be fine, he sleeps in the evenings, undisturbed normally. But the opportunity to go out hasn't happened very often, and I have issues leaving him. I feel lost without him. I feel like I'm missing something when he's not with me, which is silly in the evenings because he sleeps in a room by himself and I wouldn't normally see him anyway. So of course, he woke 5 minutes after she arrived, and I had to go down and soothe him back to sleep. He slept well all evening after this, so I needn't have worried!
We were out with four other couples, all of whom have children, three of them currently pregnant again. Most of them breastfed for a little while.
We got chatting to one couple who are pregnant with twins. Talking about my babe, how he's just started crawling, how he's been poorly, how he doesn't really eat solids and just mainly has milk feeds. The husband said to me 'You're not still feeding him yourself are you?' in a disbelieving tone, and when I replied sheepishly, 'Well, yes, of course' the look of shock on their faces! It kind of made me laugh a little, 1 at me feeling sheepish in my answer, and 2 why would I feed him any other way? He's 10 months old.
I've recently completed my breastfeeding Peer Support training, and I'm eager to help other new mummies out. And yet, a friend asking me if I'm still feeding made me feel sheepish, and kind of like I'm being a bit weird to still be feeding? I know it's thoroughly against the norm to still be breastfeeding at this age, and even more so that my babe has never ever had a drop of formula milk. It shouldn't be this way though.
My husband and I were raised soley on breastmilk, and I wouldn't have it any other way for my babe. Just think of all the money we've saved!
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The world is full of people with different ideas and environmental upbringings - the two should happily exist side by side.
ReplyDeleteBreastfeeding is a normal natural thing to do and obviously there is something in you that makes you feel guilty. You should not feel this way. Your response was to feel awkward because doing natural unsophisticated things like breastfeeding and eating organic is still considered to be a bit (hippy or these days, new ageish). 100 years ago if you were rich enough you'd have a wet nurse, if you weren't rich enough, there wouldn't have been an alternative.
Oddly enough I think that when Formula milk was devised it was seen as freedom by mothers, who then could give the responsibility of feeding the baby to others, and was no longer tied. It is a choice that mothers have these days - some like you and me and everyone I knew when you were a baby that we took really what is the lazy way and obviously the most natural way to feed our babies. And also for me it was by far the most economical way to give you a good start in life - and your sister - remembering that she spent a month in the special baby care unit and I had a pump. I felt like a cow, but I also produced more milk than she could handle - so they would give it to other babies whose mothers weren't able to, because breastmilk for babies is the perfect food, formula milk cannot and does not reproduce it and neither can it pass on the mothers immunity.
Breastmilk should be the preferred choice but like I said earlier there is a choice now. Just like there is a choice to have children or not, to have a husband or not, to have a career or not, to work or not.
Actually we've never had it so good and nither has the formula companies who through the media convince parents that giving babies formula milk post weaning is the only way to get good nutrients into them. A good balanced diet will give a growing baby and child everything it needs.
No other animal continues to have milk after weaning especially not from other animals. Cows milk is for baby cows and post weaning formula milk is just hype.