Yay for the women in the Philippines! I was at the shindig in Berkeley, which was the standing record until now. I was nursing Nate and Sophie at the time. I’m happy to pass the torch, and relieved to not be tandem nursing anymore.
When Lex was a baby I was visiting relatives in Texas. My cousin, who has two children, said to me while Lex was nursing that she’d never even seen a baby breastfeeding EVER in her life. Her husband walked into the room (absolutely nothing was showing, since I had on a nursing top and Lex wasn’t in that toddler pull-up-the shirt-then-look-around stage yet) and he turned bright red, spun on his heel like a professional dancer, muttered, "Excuse me," and hightailed it outta there. I’m sure his head would explode if he knew that I nursed Lex until he was four years and three months old. That even sounds hippie to me, and I was the one doing it!
I know nursing is not for every mother or even every baby. I used to be more, uh, strident about thinking it was the only way, but then a combination of time and karma softened my position by giving me a baby who had to have predigested formula delivered to her tummy by a tube in her nose. I still think that if it is possible to nourish an infant au naturel, then that is the logical choice. And, I’m still astonished that there are people, and mothers especially, who have never seen a baby nurse. That’s just freaky.
everyone in my family was shocked when i wanted to nurse, and the first person i ever saw nursing was a friend of mine, and i was newly-pregnant at the time.
freaky, yes. and really, really sad.
Yes. I’ve never understood people who choose not to breastfeed, when they can. When there’s no reason not to except some kind of squeamishness or fear of booby-droop. But as you say, not ours to judge. Life teaches one that soon enough.
You may remember me mentioning this, but my father was furious at my decision to (try to) breastfeed TJ. His loudly and often expressed sentiment was, and I quote, “That’s unnatural.” Other words were used “disgusting” and “sick.” As it turned out, I wasn’t able to nurse TJ – I had to go back to work when he was three weeks old, neither of us could quite get the hang of it, and some other obstacles. But I wished I could breastfeed until TJ was, like, 16 just to keep pissing him off.