Breastfeeding and teeth.
I have posted on breastfeeding before on this blog. I believe if a person can and wants to breastfeed then she should be supported fully and if people find it 'icky' in public they need only to turn their heads ever so slightly and stop gawking, thus their delicate eyes will not be scorched from their delicate little sockets by such a natural act.
However, my squeee factor rose unbidden when I read this story
I am sure I am being slightly ridiculous here, but I do firmly believe that when your child is old enough to phone for takeaway, she might not really need breast milk any longer, despite what mummy thinks. And also,and image of 'Bitty' has cleaned any lovely thoughts about lovely loyal dogs and lovely green dresses clean out of my lovely head.
posted by fatmammycat at 3:01 p.m.
24 Comments:
My nipples retreated at the sight of those teefs.
Jesus H.
Her nipples must be as tough as leather now.
Let the kid grow up already!
Hah! I automatically crossed my arms over my chest when I read it too.
I just hope for the child's sake she doesn't do it in front of her school mates. Can you imagine a kiddie birthday party where she goes for "bitty". If she is singled out as weird it may be a very difficult label to shake off, especially if she continues her education in the same school after nursery level. A recipe for teasing and bullying. The mother is what we call Upminster (a few stops past Barking on the central line!). This freaky perverted woman is doing this for herself, not for her child, who would not be maniacally feeding if she was given proper meals. Yuk - makes me want to barf!
Squee indeed FMC, with a little bit of bleugh.
This comment has been removed by the author.
John Mc said...
The advantages of long term breast feeding are for the mother not the child. As you get towards the end of the first year of breast feeding, benefits to the child decrease, but the longer a mother breast feeds the greater, (dramatically greater), her chance of avoiding breast cancer. Ireland has very low rates of breast feeding,(comparatively), and high rates of breast cancer.
All that said - I have witnessed a 3 year trying to yank up his mothers shirt for a snack at a dinner party, which is icky. His mother was mortified and, (as my wife put it), the balcony was closed very soon thereafter.
n the teeth thingy. My wife cut off our youngest after 9 months after he nearly severed her nipple. He thought it was fun to take a little bite every so often, and would smile!
John Mc - you have come up with the very best reason! Why didn't she say so - if someone had breast cancer in their family than that would be a really valid reason for continuing.
Her arguments all seem reasonable enough but there's something just not quite right with it all.
A "manically" sucking child alternating between breasts like some sort of Tasmanian devil to increase let-down doesn't sound all that comforted to me, rather needy. And at 4 you should not be mistaking your mother for the fridge.
Practically I don't know how she does it. And she can't even have had a glass of wine for about 5 years.
And "twiddling" is just all wrong.
She's setting her kid up for a whole bunch of teasing when she gets to school. The poor kid is going to be so confused when other kids mock her for something she's so comforted by. This is about the mother not her child - she cites her daughter asking for milk to make her cold better. Well, where did a 4-year old get that from? Her mother's indoctrinating her with her own mantra.
There may well be benefits to breast-feeding beyond a year. Maybe even 'til two. But 4? Gimme a break. At that point the social disadvantages for the child outweigh any other benefits.
Seriously, each time I read it a BEEEEG part of me just goes yack.
The most shocking scene in Morrison's "Song of Solomon" was that Macon was breast-fed until he was 12 so everyone called him Milk Man. I'm remembering that correctly, right?
*shudder*
I couldn't access the article, but I have a feeling it's about a child who choses breast milk over a coke. I'm sorry, but that kind of stuff really makes me queasy. Breastfeeding in public is a right, but in my world, that's breastfeeding babies. Breastfeeding children in public or private, that's just plain creepy.
"When she gets a cold, she tells me that she needs my milk to "kill the cough". One night, she started to run a desperately high fever (104) and I had no medicine or way of getting any. I fed her all night; she injected her germs into me while my body made the antibodies she needed and fed them back to her."
wtf. no, really, WTF!?! i live in the states, so needless to say i deal with many many stupid people on a regular basis. but what this woman just stated is almost next to impossible - unless her night consisted of more hours than most. producing antibodies doesn't just happen instantaneously. and hypothetically speaking, should the child pass on the germs to the mother (what, does the kid take a big bite or something?) and the mother make antibodies to the "germs", there's absolutely no guarantee that the mother's antibodies will work in the child's body.
ohk. i'll stop now. but what this woman is presenting as fact, at least in the paragraph mentioned, is false and wrong in so many ways....
i'm going to go hit my head against the wall a few times. maybe then her argument will make sense.
bah!
And at 4 you should not be mistaking your mother for the fridge
Hee.
I thought most studies showed that women are "naturally" programmed to have lots of kids (back to the whole Pill and women nowadays have far more periods in a lifetime than their grandmothers argument). If the natural weaning age is six, as this woman suggests, how would someone with 3 or even 4 kids under the age of six feed them all?
I feel so sorry for this child when she meets her first boyfriend, wants to move away from home etc. There are going to be tears, 27 phonecalls a day and unannounced visits in the middle of the night.
As long as she's not still breast feeding that child when she's 27.
She sounds like the La Leche fascists who have gone entirely amazonian about breast feeding because of the bottle culture that arrived in the 1960s and 1970s.
I go a good deal of the distance with them (and luckily my offsprung were all breast fed) but they don't see the possible downsides of protracted feeding. For instance, if child #1 is pushed off the bosom at age three to make way for child #2 how might that effect child #1?
Oww! Oww! Oww! (and I don't even have breasts of my own)
Gotta say I love the idea of women crossing their arms over their chest as they read that - in much the same way as men cover their groin when they see another man hit in the groin with a football.
It's an involuntary action.
Conan, you can be sure this lady only has one child, nobody with more than one child would have the time to be this 'focused'.
Ick and double-ick. Sounds to me as though she is trying desperately to keep her 4 year old like a baby. Why not talk to her child and help her deal with things that she needs 'comfort' over. I think she is stunting the child's emotional development by whipping them out at every occasion.
Good points posted re the germs/antibodies and 'natural' weaning ages of 6!
(And ICK!!)
Ick, even with my older son I gave up breastfeeding when he was eight months old. No well thought out or particularly deep psyhological reasoning, just a faint irritation that I hadn't worn a decent summer dress in ages (cos they had to be huge breast padded numbers lol) and that drinking a pint of lager whilst breast feeding was generally frowned upon.
Something had to give! And, damn it all, after two pregnancies and lots of dodgy maternity clobber I wanted my wardrobe and tennents special drinking habits to return.
I also love your remark that no child capable of sending out for their own takeaway should be breastfed. Made me giggle.
God, I thought my Mam was bad feeding me till I was 14 months (apparently because of this I am the "spoiled" one in the family). The child could probably make herself a sandwich for feck sake. Ew ew and double ew! 4 years old and still getting boobie is WAY too old!
I am mixed on this issue. This post speaks poorly for your average extended breastfeeder. the natural weaning age as far as most anthropologists are concerned would be somewhere between the ages of 2 and 7... HOWEVER, there are boundary issues which are clearly not being addressed by that mother. I weaned my son at 21 months because I felt emotionally drained and no longer had the desire to breastfeed anymore. We have been very fortunate health-wise with our family and I attribute much of that to our extended breastfeeding- BUT- to clarify- it was not on demand whenever he wanted- as I did not want to convey the message that he owned my milk so to speak-- it was out of comfort when i wanted to help if he was very sick or hurt and before bed and occasionally upon waking if it was a "lazy day"- but to tolerate the things she was saying she dealt with from that 4 year old is beyond my comprehension-- and 50 feeds a day?! that's just ridiculous i dont remember more than 4 on the hardest of days after about the 12 month mark... I would say it is unfair to judge long term breastfeeders based on such an outlandish post- but thank you for sharing- it explains a bit why the social stigmatism is so high and what kinds of things run through the minds of those who criticize endended breastfeeders. (oh- and a note on the teeth- children can easily be taught not to bite when their teeth first start coming in-- it's not the teeth that are the problem in the scenario but rather the ability of the mother to set boundaries)
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