To feed my 1 year old outside

[Dandylioness1]

My son is 13 months old.

I met my friend for a walk in the park this morning.

Her daughter is 2 years old.

We’d been walking a while and my son started to become unsettled and was asking for “boob boob”

I told my friend I’d stop at the next bench and let him have some milk.

She seemed mortified by this idea. She asked me if I could give him some water instead and that he was too old for me to be feeding him in public.

I told her I would be discreet about it but she said it was just about being discreet and that it’s also an issue that he’s 13 months and doesn’t need breastmilk, she said I should offer him water or a snack instead.

I ignored what she said I found a place to sit and let my son have some milk.

It’s made me feel pretty bad now and as a first time mum (who’s spent my sons first year in a global pandemic and lockdowns) i feel like I’m doing it all wrong. 🙁

AIBU to feed him on demand at this age?

I think the overbearing push for breastfeeding in this country is not justified by the evidence. Especially not the obesity statistic, which lowers dramatically when mother's IQ is accounted for.

@FloconDeNeige If that is true, you wanna have a word with the WHO because they are bang out of order for telling all the lies they have about breastfeeding....

and it wasn't OP that set up anything, you knew from the first page what this thread was about. You had the option not to engage - you chose to, aggressively, attack the OP.

Whatever happened to 'food before one is just for fun'? Does this not imply that solids will only make up a proportion of a child's calorific intake, not the majority of it? The idea that a child of 13 months should be restricted to breast milk morning and evening is absurd.

Really, OP, 13 months is still so little. And babies are so different, and how much they rely on breastmilk for sustenance varies hugely from one child to the next. Mine was very keen on solids and seemed to prefer them to breast milk as soon as she'd figured it out. But some of her peers really still needed a feed every 3 hours or so, because their relationship with other foods was trickier or more play-based. That was definitely within the spectrum of normal. And I'm sure at that age I still relied on breastfeeding to be certain she was definitely fed.

Just do you, OP. There's nothing wrong with your parenting or your choices re breastfeeding. My kid just turned 2 and still breastfeeds on occasion. It's not creepy, it's not inappropriate, it's not infantilising. It is in accordance with WHO guidelines and it is a great thing I'm able to do for her. Everyone is different but nobody should feel ashamed of their choices.

Ok zero benefits is untrue. There are marginal GI benefits to the child at a population level. And there are some maternal benefits related to cancer risk, but who actually cares about the mother, anyway?

This is a competition about who’s the biggest, best Mummy martyr of all, isn’t it?! Don’t kid yourselves that this is for ‘the children’. It’s to make yourselves feel superior. Gold stars all round ⭐️

13mo is still quite young! your AIBU was specifically about feeling on demand at 13mo, which is very subjective and depends on the child, I would say yes 13mo is too old to be breastfed on demand, but they were based on my experiences - and if you're going back to work in 4 weeks it maybe is something to address now so that your son is more settled without you

YANBU though for still breastfeeding at 13mo or breastfeeding in public - that was your friend being ridiculous

@FloconDeNeige

You're a pharmaceutical scientist and you believe there's "zero benefits to the baby"? Are you honestly saying that the antibodies in breastmilk do nothing? The breast-specific macrophages do nothing? The epithelial lactocytes, stem cells and immune cells have no effect? The oligosaccharides are just decoration?

See above

I'm not so naive as to think nobody ever sets up a fight for something to do or to further an agenda but I don't think the OP is.

There's lots of mums who feed 1+ year olds, and lots of people who frown upon it as seen in this thread. The scenario is totally plausible and I totally understand why someone feeling a bit aggrieved might (perhaps misguidedly!) post about it on mumsnet

There's loads of AIBU threads where the OP insists they are right so this OP doing so doesn't mean she was feeling the way she says at the start

@FloconDeNeige

Ok zero benefits is untrue. There are marginal GI benefits to the child at a population level. And there are some maternal benefits related to cancer risk, but who actually cares about the mother, anyway?

This is a competition about who’s the biggest, best Mummy martyr of all, isn’t it?! Don’t kid yourselves that this is for ‘the children’. It’s to make yourselves feel superior. Gold stars all round ⭐️

@FloconDeNeige

Has wundermule ended her shift and passed it over to you... 🤔

@FloconDeNeige you know it doesn't have to have anything to do with being a martyr. On the contrary breastfeeding can be massively convenient

@FloconDeNeige you’re venturing off into the illogical now. A mammal feeding their offspring with their breastmilk is not being a ’mummy martyr’.

Fucking hell, some of you need to put a tit in it.

Ah now. I strongly suspect that poster is not a pharmaceutical scientist but is a deeply unhappy soul who’s backed themselves into an even unhappier corner here. Contrary to some people’s beliefs, no mother’s objective in breastfeeding their own child is to make anyone feel like that.

@CreosoteQueen

Of course I got called ‘deeply shitty’ for that comment as well.

It was, and remains, a deeply shitty comment.

Why? (My shift hasn’t ended OP, still here 👋🏻 although I shouldn’t be, I have housework to do!)

@breadbinbaby nah, those gorillas in the rainforest are breastfeeding to make me feel like shit. That’s their agenda, they must be stopped.

I agree that colostrum is more than marginally beneficial. But tell me, what are the distinct advantages of breastmilk-derived oligosaccharides over formula-derived oligosaccharides?

At the current time, there just isn’t enough high quality research to support the magnitude of claims made about the benefits of breastfeeding. Most studies are unable to disentangle the socioeconomic effects and where they have, at a sibling level there were no differences found, except in relation to constipation.

There may be longer-term and epigenetic effects but at the current time it is not possible to say either way. More research is needed.

My issue is making claims that the data just don’t support when properly examined. And I have even more issue with using these exaggerated claims as a stick to bash other women with, for usually no other reason than to attempt to put people down in order to make themselves feel better. It’s a shitty thing to do.

I think the overbearing push for breastfeeding in this country is not justified by the evidence.

What ‘overbearing push’ would that be?

We have some of the lowest rates in the world.

We also have people like the OPs friend telling her she shouldn’t be doing it in public.

@FloconDeNeige

I agree that colostrum is more than marginally beneficial. But tell me, what are the distinct advantages of breastmilk-derived oligosaccharides over formula-derived oligosaccharides?

At the current time, there just isn’t enough high quality research to support the magnitude of claims made about the benefits of breastfeeding. Most studies are unable to disentangle the socioeconomic effects and where they have, at a sibling level there were no differences found, except in relation to constipation.

There may be longer-term and epigenetic effects but at the current time it is not possible to say either way. More research is needed.

My issue is making claims that the data just don’t support when properly examined. And I have even more issue with using these exaggerated claims as a stick to bash other women with, for usually no other reason than to attempt to put people down in order to make themselves feel better. It’s a shitty thing to do.

I haven’t seen one person put down formula feeding mums on this thread. There’s been LOTS of put downs and generally awful attitudes to breastfeeding mums though.

If in the future, sufficient new research demonstrates unequivocal, statistically significant data on the wide-scale tangible benefits of breastfeeding, then I’ll be very happy to accept it. But we are not there at the moment.

@Wondermule

I thought you said you were leaving the thread?

I’ve already explained why it was shitty.

I haven’t seen one person put down formula feeding mums on this thread.

I’m not specifically talking about this thread.

I haven’t seen one person put down formula feeding mums on this thread. There’s been LOTS of put downs and generally awful attitudes to breastfeeding mums though.

This is very true.

@FloconDeNeige

If in the future, sufficient new research demonstrates unequivocal, statistically significant data on the wide-scale tangible benefits of breastfeeding, then I’ll be very happy to accept it. But we are not there at the moment.

With respect, no one is waiting for you to deign to accept it!

[quote CreosoteQueen]@Wondermule

I thought you said you were leaving the thread?

I’ve already explained why it was shitty.[/quote]
I’ll leave when people stop restarting conversations with me 😂 why is it shitty? I think ‘shitty’ would be encouraging an exhausted and struggling new mum to continue bfing at the cost of her mental health and enjoyment of her baby, only to realise her kid will still get colds/allergies/asthma or be obese pretty much at the same rate as anyone else’s.